WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:07.640 Well, good morning everybody from Seattle, Washington in the north-western part of the 00:07.640 --> 00:08.640 United States. 00:08.640 --> 00:10.080 Welcome to the Daily Source Code. 00:10.080 --> 00:13.240 Today is June 23rd, 2005. 00:13.240 --> 00:18.960 It is 1120 in the morning here in Seattle, which I have this great watch I told you about 00:18.960 --> 00:26.280 the Patricia Bach for me, which means it's 220 in New York and 720 in the United Kingdom, 00:26.280 --> 00:28.080 820 in the rest of Europe. 00:28.160 --> 00:30.440 Now that you know that I'm your world clock, welcome. 00:30.440 --> 00:32.120 I am really excited. 00:32.120 --> 00:35.320 Excuse me, I just opened the windows here. 00:35.320 --> 00:40.920 Got in last night, Flu Direct, we're not direct on force, and the Flu from London to 00:40.920 --> 00:47.640 to Seattle via Chicago, which made for a very interesting flight. 00:47.640 --> 00:54.840 Was nice about it, it was United Airlines, and United Airlines on Channel 9 has, if it's 00:54.840 --> 01:00.440 gone, and usually you can listen to the cockpit and listen basically to the communications 01:00.440 --> 01:05.960 between air traffic control and all aircraft, including the one you're on, and also aircraft 01:05.960 --> 01:12.240 to aircraft communications, and that was actually funny because I was pretty tired and we 01:12.240 --> 01:19.600 left like one PM, and I liked you know, down one glass of champagne, which of course they 01:19.600 --> 01:23.600 always hand you in a little plastic cups, and then I fall asleep just about as the engines 01:23.680 --> 01:28.360 are revving up on the runway, and I had my headphones on, actually my ear buds, my 01:28.360 --> 01:33.640 Sony in earphones, listening to Channel 9, so I knew it was going on, I could hear about 01:33.640 --> 01:38.960 all the bad weather in New York, and I actually woke up two hours later because something 01:38.960 --> 01:44.160 some instinct in me said, oh wow, hold on, I'm not hearing anything else, and I'm hearing 01:44.160 --> 01:48.680 the radio, and of course we were over the, over the ocean at that point, so it was logical 01:48.680 --> 01:52.600 that there was a lot of air communication going on. 01:52.600 --> 01:57.880 But here for Numbdix, which today it's seven o'clock as registration, a little pre-party, 01:57.880 --> 02:03.880 and then Friday and Saturday is the big, well it turns out it's going to be quite a big 02:03.880 --> 02:07.680 conference, I don't think it's actually, I don't think it's a, I don't know how many attendees 02:07.680 --> 02:11.760 there are, I don't think it's really big, it's been sold out, they actually had to get 02:11.760 --> 02:16.240 another room to be able to handle some of the overflow and be able to let more people 02:16.240 --> 02:21.400 into the conference, but I feel that we're at a tipping point, and really the million 02:21.400 --> 02:26.160 listener March has begun, and we're going to see a lot of announcements coming out, 02:26.160 --> 02:32.560 some of them already happening today, which just made me so incredibly happy because we're 02:32.560 --> 02:39.280 at this tipping point that I've been working towards my entire life, or most of my, certainly 02:39.280 --> 02:45.440 all of my adult life, where the listeners are coming, and this is something that we've 02:45.520 --> 02:50.640 talked about before on the source code, and Ron and I have talked about it in our strategy 02:50.640 --> 02:56.720 cast, it's all about getting the listeners in, that is step one. Oh, but actually there's 02:56.720 --> 03:03.040 something much more important than I'm excited about, congratulations to our operations officer 03:03.040 --> 03:08.720 Brian Longus, a pod show, his lovely wife Jennifer, their twin boys, because they have another 03:08.800 --> 03:16.080 addition to the family, Mason Andrew Longus was born yesterday, eight and a half pounds, 03:16.080 --> 03:22.800 woohoo, for Jennifer, Lociento is what Brian will be saying, fantastic, couldn't be happier for 03:22.800 --> 03:29.440 you guys, that's great news, so our pod show family has been expanded by one in just overnight, 03:29.440 --> 03:37.200 so that is really one of the most exciting things. In order to understand why I'm so excited about 03:38.160 --> 03:43.920 what is happening right now, I think I should go back a little bit and just tell you a bit 03:43.920 --> 03:50.480 about myself, which I don't think I've really done the whole story in chronological order on the source 03:50.480 --> 04:01.120 code, but I've been a broadcaster all my life, it's funny, it's a day-winder, throughout a 04:01.120 --> 04:06.400 comment on his web blog a couple weeks ago, you know, Adam's just a DJ. Well, in many ways, 04:06.400 --> 04:14.720 I am just a just a DJ, but my experience in radio and broadcasting goes back much, much further, 04:14.720 --> 04:20.080 and I want to talk a little bit about that so you can understand why I'm so excited about 04:20.080 --> 04:24.160 what is happening right now, and what the reasons are for the excitement, because there's a 04:24.160 --> 04:28.240 whole bunch of things just happening in succession, boom, boom, boom, one after the other is, 04:28.400 --> 04:33.920 just stuff is just spitting out right now. When I was, well, first of all, I've always been into 04:35.200 --> 04:44.240 into sound, and when I was six years old, I can recall two things from my, from my past, 04:44.240 --> 04:49.600 I'm just loading something up here, I want to share with you in a minute, and there's actually 04:49.680 --> 04:57.920 a picture somewhere of me sitting in my parents' closet, and I'd found an old real-to-real 04:57.920 --> 05:02.480 recorder, and I don't think it actually worked, but I was sitting there with a microphone, 05:03.520 --> 05:08.400 just in the closet with the doors open sitting in between clothes that are hanging up and playing 05:08.400 --> 05:15.600 with this real-to-real recorder. And I also remember there was a kid on my blog, he was 13, 05:15.600 --> 05:20.640 I think I was seven, and this was when you're still living in the States, and he had a miniature, 05:20.640 --> 05:26.640 it was a red plastic real-to-real recorder. These, these reels were no more than dollar 05:26.640 --> 05:34.160 pancake size, really, and actually you could turn it on, you could record your voice, 05:34.160 --> 05:37.600 you could then rewind it and listen back to it. And that was the first time I heard my own voice 05:37.600 --> 05:42.080 on tape, and I'm sure that anyone who's heard their own voice played back from recording 05:42.080 --> 05:45.760 for the first time is always like kind of freaked out, because like, wow, I sound like that, 05:45.760 --> 05:49.360 I sound like a girl, which of course at the time I'm sure I did sound like, because I was just a 05:49.360 --> 05:55.840 little, little take. I actually remember saving up four weeks' worth of allowance to buy this tape 05:55.840 --> 06:03.200 recorder off of this kid, and it was a messed up little machine, because the batteries that would pop 06:03.200 --> 06:07.200 out, and if they popped out, it was almost impossible to get it to work properly again, so I had to go 06:07.200 --> 06:12.080 back to him five or six times, until he got fed up with me, and then he wouldn't help me any more, 06:12.080 --> 06:17.680 with fixing it. But after that we moved to the Netherlands pretty quickly, so the tape recorder 06:17.680 --> 06:21.600 got lost somewhere in the mix. By the way, I'm pacing around the room, this is what I like to do 06:21.600 --> 06:26.160 when I'm just yapping away, and this is going to be pretty much just a talk source code. 06:27.200 --> 06:31.840 So we moved to the Netherlands, the Netherlands up until the 1990s, so the Netherlands, 06:31.840 --> 06:35.440 you know, Amsterdam, we lived right underneath Amsterdam about 10 miles south. 06:36.400 --> 06:43.760 Up until the 1990s, the Netherlands had government or state run radio and television, 06:45.040 --> 06:52.400 which is not easy to conceive if you've grown up in the states with commercial broadcasting, 06:52.400 --> 06:58.560 but most of the world actually still to this day works in this manner, where the government controls 06:58.640 --> 07:06.240 the air waves, and they determine who is going to utilize those. And in most cases, in the 07:06.240 --> 07:10.080 Netherlands, it's a very small country, you know, size of Rhode Island, probably a little bit smaller, 07:10.880 --> 07:16.080 completely packed, 17 million people, all speaking one language, by the way, 07:16.080 --> 07:20.880 certainly at the time when there was like 12 or 11 or 12 million people many years ago, 07:20.880 --> 07:26.640 it's all Dutch. And the way the Netherlands chose to do it is they said, okay, we're kind of like 07:27.040 --> 07:33.360 a social democratic country here, what we're going to do is we're going to let, we're going to 07:34.080 --> 07:42.080 parcel up the air time on these frequencies based upon popularity of religious groups, 07:43.280 --> 07:48.080 which is just an amazing concept when you think about it. And to this day, they still have all these 07:48.080 --> 07:54.880 different broadcast organizations who are allowed to, who are allocated time on these television 07:54.960 --> 08:00.640 and radio frequencies. And at the time, there are only two television stations and four radio 08:00.640 --> 08:04.000 stations that you could listen to, but they were national, so there were transmitters all over the 08:04.000 --> 08:10.000 place. And to this day, you still have at least five or six different religious groups 08:10.720 --> 08:16.000 who have time allocated to them based upon membership. And membership, interestingly enough, 08:16.000 --> 08:22.000 was measured by subscribers to your TV guide. So here's the wacky thing, I don't want to go into 08:22.000 --> 08:26.400 that too much, but you know, the TV guide is the TV guide, everyone knows what's going to come on 08:26.400 --> 08:31.680 because everyone publishes their information. But all the articles and the additional information 08:31.680 --> 08:39.040 and really the concept of becoming a member, a member of a group that would allow your group 08:39.040 --> 08:44.160 by having more membership to actually get more air time was very compelling at the time. And 08:45.120 --> 08:52.080 it worked well for many, many years. But you can understand that at a certain point as the 08:52.080 --> 08:58.000 world started to open up and more communications became possible and people started to cross borders, 08:58.000 --> 09:04.640 that there was a real need, a real demand for other types of programming than what we're available 09:04.640 --> 09:10.240 at the time. Now, please understand, as a kid, one is only one radio channel, one frequency 09:10.320 --> 09:16.160 you can tune into that had the, quote, popular music and it started at 7am and ended at midnight 09:16.160 --> 09:22.240 and it was basically controlled by all these different religious groups that that wasn't necessarily 09:22.240 --> 09:26.720 compelling for everybody. And quite honestly, that just wasn't enough. There wasn't enough choice 09:26.720 --> 09:34.800 or enough diversity for it to really work for anyone. So although that model I think was probably 09:34.880 --> 09:41.280 valid at the time, what we have to look at is the frequency distribution. That's really what 09:41.280 --> 09:46.880 it's changing here underneath our feet and from this distribution change comes many, many, many 09:46.880 --> 09:51.840 derivatives which is going to make life extremely exciting. So I, without really knowing it was probably 09:51.840 --> 09:59.040 one of these frustrated teenagers and I was very interested in broadcasting. Don't ask me why 09:59.040 --> 10:05.120 don't ask me where, you know, if that's a gene that you're born with or if it's a reditary or 10:05.120 --> 10:10.320 if it's something, I don't know, I just, I always like broadcasting and I certainly was no looker. 10:10.320 --> 10:15.200 So I always felt that radio was perfect for me, you know, the old, the old adage of the perfect 10:15.200 --> 10:23.360 face for radio. Well, that's totally how I felt. In the 70s, there were a number of 10:23.440 --> 10:31.360 older people, I'm talking 20, 20, 30 year olds who were also very frustrated with the media 10:31.360 --> 10:35.600 landscape, not just in the Netherlands, but all over Europe. And believe me, this is still to this 10:35.600 --> 10:43.600 day is happening. The airwaves are regulated by the owners of the airwaves. That is the country 10:43.600 --> 10:49.200 that the airwaves are broadcast in i.e. the government and of course having that type of 10:49.200 --> 10:55.600 power to decide who uses the media landscape is power. It's big power. It's political power. 10:55.600 --> 11:00.240 It's very, very important to the government to know what is being said and who's saying what. 11:01.440 --> 11:06.800 But there were a number of, you know, so the music scene was just, that's really where it came from. 11:06.800 --> 11:12.640 It was exploding. We had, you know, we're just coming off of kind of flower power hippie, 11:12.640 --> 11:19.920 you know, the Beatles, and I didn't really, you know, I got into the Beatles very late because I'm 11:19.920 --> 11:26.640 just not old enough. The purple, Led Zeppelin, you know, heavy, heavy ass rock, and then of course 11:26.640 --> 11:31.440 disco came along. But music was changing very rapidly and lot was going on. And it wasn't getting 11:31.440 --> 11:40.640 the exposure. Now we didn't have, you know, iPods and iTunes and digital radios and satellite radios. 11:40.720 --> 11:45.200 You know, we had, you had a radio. You probably had a transistor radio and you had a record player. 11:45.200 --> 11:50.480 And, you know, you have parties and you bring over your suitcase full of records and you take turns 11:50.480 --> 11:58.560 playing, playing the music. So it was a frustrating time or unsatisfying. Let's put it that way. 11:58.560 --> 12:06.720 So a number of people who felt that they also had some kind of calling or mission to be broadcasters 12:07.200 --> 12:16.240 with the help of interestingly enough and backing, financial backing of radio manufacturers started 12:16.240 --> 12:21.120 these pirate radioships in the North Sea. The North Sea sits right off the coast of the 12:21.120 --> 12:27.280 Netherlands between the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. And they had found kind of a loophole in the 12:27.280 --> 12:35.040 law, which was if you're on, if you're on international coastal waters, then there's no law 12:35.120 --> 12:41.920 that applies to you. And so they were there broadcasting on mediumwave AM, basically broadcasting to 12:41.920 --> 12:47.280 well, like radio Caroline, we were broadcasting to the United Kingdom who had similar issues with their 12:47.280 --> 12:52.640 BBC public, you know, their government-controlled airwaves. And there was radio Veronica and me and 12:52.640 --> 12:58.080 me go and radio North Sea and these guys were all sitting on shitty ass boats and some great 12:58.080 --> 13:02.880 radio to listen to, by the way, you know, when big storms on the North Sea and the anchor 13:02.960 --> 13:08.640 broke loose and they were made a call and then these guys the competition got so fierce between them. 13:08.640 --> 13:13.520 They started throwing bombs at these other ships and it was pandemonium. And of course, 13:13.920 --> 13:19.040 eventually they figured out a way to outlaw that. And the North Sea is not that big so it's kind of 13:19.040 --> 13:26.800 hard to outrun and you know, and believe me again, the awesome power of airwaves is a very important 13:26.800 --> 13:37.360 issue to any type of government. So they came on shore and radio Veronica basically did something 13:37.360 --> 13:41.360 really smart as they said, you know what, we think that we have enough power, we have enough people 13:41.360 --> 13:48.000 who are interested in our type of programming which is religion, agnostic, you know, it's all about 13:48.000 --> 13:53.040 entertainment, fun, music, being there, being a part of it, being a part of this cool club, 13:53.040 --> 14:00.000 we think we have enough to qualify to get a broadcast license and they mobilized on the 18th of 14:00.000 --> 14:09.200 April 1970, Paul, I forget the actual 70 year, they mobilized, I think more than a million people, 14:09.200 --> 14:15.200 I believe, to march on the government in the Hague and the Netherlands to demand that radio Veronica 14:15.200 --> 14:20.160 receive a slice of this airtime. Now there's a whole bunch of, you know, there's a whole 14:20.160 --> 14:24.400 lineage that keeps on going from there, but that was really the start for me, where hey wait 14:24.400 --> 14:29.280 and then here's something new on radio, they only had a couple hours a week on the public broadcast 14:29.280 --> 14:33.840 frequencies but it was exciting and it was fun and these guys were yelling and screaming and playing 14:33.840 --> 14:38.880 great songs and just having a good time and I totally felt I want to be a part of that and the 14:38.880 --> 14:45.680 mystique of the man behind the microphone for some reason just really struck me. Now of course I was 14:45.760 --> 14:51.520 14 years old, there was no way in hell, I was going to get on the radio, but I had received from 14:51.520 --> 14:58.560 my parents a radio shack 101 project kit and I'd probably still sell something very similar to this, 14:58.560 --> 15:03.200 which you know, then it was just transistors and diodes and capacitors and now it probably 15:03.200 --> 15:09.440 includes integrated chips that you can manipulate and build applications with, but it really was an 15:09.440 --> 15:14.880 application kit and you had little wires, different lengths, red, white and blue for a different length 15:14.960 --> 15:21.840 of wire and you could clip these into little springs and create things and one of the things 15:21.840 --> 15:27.600 that could be created was an AM transmitter and the transmitter was very, very weak, it didn't go 15:27.600 --> 15:34.080 far at all but I had learned enough through this project kit to understand that I could probably 15:34.080 --> 15:38.640 also build an FM transmitter which I did and I built a little FM transmitter which really doesn't take 15:38.720 --> 15:45.440 a lot of components to create that and it can run off a nine-volt battery and then of course 15:45.440 --> 15:51.280 it all comes down to how good is your antenna to really get your signal out and the distributed. 15:52.000 --> 15:56.400 So I'll be tinkering away and also at the time I was heavy into CB radio so I knew a little bit 15:56.400 --> 16:01.120 about again there's that radio thing, I knew a little bit about antennas and how they worked and 16:01.120 --> 16:08.240 and just had learned a lot just by fooling around with it and using it and I built an FM transmitter 16:08.240 --> 16:12.800 and immediately told my mom, come on mom jump in the car we got a drive around and see how far 16:12.800 --> 16:17.680 the signal reaches and man it was good you know I could see where there were some dead spots in 16:17.680 --> 16:22.080 in my broadcast but it was cool and what I would do is I'd just try to cassette player plug that 16:22.080 --> 16:27.360 straight into the transmitter and you know so it would roll on for a bit and would listen to it 16:27.360 --> 16:32.960 and so my mom was nice enough to drag me to drive me around and see that a couple of times she 16:32.960 --> 16:38.880 got tired of that eventually of course but um a day or two later I heard through the neighborhood 16:38.880 --> 16:43.040 and then we lived in a small village maybe only 800 people lived in this village just south of 16:43.040 --> 16:48.000 Amsterdam that other kids had heard this because the frequency the dial wasn't jammed you know 16:48.000 --> 16:52.400 there was there was only a couple of stations so there's lots of free spectrum interestingly enough 16:52.400 --> 16:59.120 just unused at the time and they were listening and they said hey that's pretty cool man we 16:59.200 --> 17:06.240 we heard the signal that you've been putting out and so immediately I was I was I was I was hooked 17:07.120 --> 17:13.840 and I was the next thing I did oh that's right then I figured well wouldn't be nice if I could 17:13.840 --> 17:17.840 you know do just like the big guys and I could play a record and talk and then play another record 17:17.840 --> 17:22.240 and I had a microphone so that was no problem but essentially I had to figure out how to mix 17:22.240 --> 17:27.760 all this together so bought a couple more books you know got the soldering iron out bought some 17:27.760 --> 17:33.120 a few components some potential meters basically faders slider faders and built them into a 17:33.120 --> 17:38.160 wooden cabinet I was no woodworker by any means but it kind of worked and I had a mixer and I 17:38.160 --> 17:43.040 could mix stuff and I started doing broadcast and you know and it was totally harmless so I didn't 17:43.040 --> 17:48.880 have to really worry about any local FCC getting on my butt about it but I was I was I was I was 17:48.880 --> 17:53.680 like wow look at this feedback people are listening to what I'm saying they're hearing the 17:53.680 --> 17:58.240 music I'm playing they're responding to it and that gave me a great feeling and I really wanted 17:58.240 --> 18:04.480 to do something with this when I was 15 I saw an ad in the local newspaper that they were looking 18:04.480 --> 18:17.120 for on air talent and engineering talent for the the nearby located hospital the tulip 18:17.120 --> 18:22.960 possible hospital in umstulfane again south of Amsterdam I jumped on you had to be 16 but I 18:22.960 --> 18:26.480 cleared it when my parents had said yeah I just lied to them you know you can just say or 16 if 18:26.480 --> 18:30.480 they ask if you get caught well then you're out of luck but we think it's it's a close circuit 18:30.480 --> 18:35.440 radio station which means you have a very captive audience it was it was quite a trip but they 18:35.440 --> 18:39.920 had a professional studio and they had you know a big mixer and they had you know they had 18:39.920 --> 18:44.320 everything except the transmitter actually transmitter was just wires running through the entire 18:44.400 --> 18:48.400 hospital so people would listen in on an earphone they had a choice of you know the four 18:48.400 --> 18:55.200 national uh nationally run uh stations and then a fifth station which was this radio tulip 18:55.200 --> 19:00.480 power tulip radio and it would come on at six p.m. and it would go off the air around nine or 19:00.480 --> 19:08.080 ten and we had different groups working that and it was all um volunteer work and I was accepted 19:08.080 --> 19:13.120 I wasn't accepted as an on air host I was accepted as an engineer first off and so I was 19:13.200 --> 19:18.960 running the board as we say it for um and stringy at microphones for the different shows and I do it 19:18.960 --> 19:23.920 as much as possible in between homework and and school work and I'd go to the station I really 19:23.920 --> 19:29.920 learned my chops there and that's where I was introduced to many different techniques of presenting 19:29.920 --> 19:34.960 there were a number of people there who were very very influential on me and as I was building my own 19:34.960 --> 19:39.760 craft but it was a great place to get my chops down and I met a guy there called Yurumfen 19:39.840 --> 19:45.600 who I'd later I went on to create many many great radio shows with who was working at a pirate 19:45.600 --> 19:51.920 radio station in Amsterdam now so here and this time I'm 1617 and you know mobile had a had a 19:51.920 --> 20:02.880 a moped which kind of looked more like a motorcycle and oh boy who's this oh boy oh no one second 20:02.880 --> 20:08.880 I just got to take this I'll be right back and go anywhere okay sorry about that uh interrupted my flow 20:10.160 --> 20:17.600 okay um right so I met this guy and um and he was working for a pirate radio station 20:17.600 --> 20:24.960 in Amsterdam and this was a much bigger operation these guys had 150 watt FM sender 20:24.960 --> 20:31.360 sender transmitter they had a huge antenna on top one of these canal houses and they were broadcasting 20:31.360 --> 20:39.040 from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning and it was the rhythm of the city it was decibel radio 20:39.120 --> 20:45.440 it was fucking amazing and we had a tremendous reach because of the height of our antenna and 20:45.440 --> 20:51.600 we were playing and this is you know eighty eighty one I think yeah eighty eighty one and we were playing 20:51.600 --> 20:56.480 Madonna when the one her her record first came out that included borderline in holiday and it wasn't 20:56.480 --> 21:01.280 until two years later that that became a hit we were playing and this is in the days of fun boy 21:01.280 --> 21:06.720 three in banana ramma it was Johnny Gill and Stacy Lada saw it was really music you just could not 21:06.800 --> 21:12.800 get anywhere else and we were major heroes we were all fucking geeks and we were you know basically 21:12.800 --> 21:18.640 shun you know from from social life but we would all converge on this little station which you know 21:18.640 --> 21:23.360 we had we had advertisers local advertisers we had enough money to pay rent and we had enough 21:23.360 --> 21:28.080 money to kind of keep the operation going we still had the all pony up for the drinks and for the coffee 21:29.200 --> 21:34.880 but it was one of the most fun periods of my life we were just creating complete free form radio 21:34.880 --> 21:39.200 doing whatever we wanted the only restriction we had basically was our own lives and there was 21:39.200 --> 21:43.840 no way that we were making enough money to pay ourselves to do any of this but man we were having 21:43.840 --> 21:48.640 a great time and the feedback loop through the to the phone line and through just people on the 21:48.640 --> 21:56.560 street it was great and from that day I you know I knew this is well I already knew it but 21:56.560 --> 22:03.360 I wanted to be a broadcaster parallel track I was a oh man what do I have I have like ten I 22:03.360 --> 22:08.960 went to I'm at the pause this and continue a little bit later but it'll be worth it because 22:08.960 --> 22:14.560 I really want to get some of the story out so parallel track I was working at a computer electronic 22:14.560 --> 22:20.960 store on on weekends on Saturday selling components and stuff and the first computer started 22:20.960 --> 22:27.280 to come out and I'd already been introduced to the Apple 2 my dad had one which I didn't 22:27.280 --> 22:33.040 really use but I kind of tinker to run with it the common or VIC 20 came out and I learned a 22:33.040 --> 22:40.640 lot about you know just how data flows through a through a computer and there was another guy there 22:40.640 --> 22:45.600 who was a friend of mine he was a little more technical than I was but together we came up with 22:46.400 --> 22:53.200 our own modems that we built so essentially it was a 75-bod modem which and it was acoustic 22:54.080 --> 22:58.480 and he said I had a little kind of like acoustic coupler made out of cardboard boxes and you 22:58.560 --> 23:03.440 we dial each other up and then we put the phones on to our cardboard box acoustic couplers 23:03.440 --> 23:09.360 and if I hit the A key on my terminal like a second later or so it would show up on his terminal 23:09.360 --> 23:15.280 and so we had a way to communicate and I think it was from that day because I keep coming back 23:15.280 --> 23:21.920 to the modem story that I knew that there was going to be a way to broadcast remember I've been 23:21.920 --> 23:27.680 doing everything illegally or at least not on real frequencies up until that point I knew that there 23:27.760 --> 23:34.480 would be an alternative way to distribute that would allow for radio to happen in different ways 23:34.480 --> 23:38.560 what we'll just call it radio it's really audio distribution of audio but we'll just call it 23:38.560 --> 23:49.600 radio to make it much easier and it was throughout the next 15 almost 20 years that this just 23:49.600 --> 23:56.000 kept staying in the back of my mind I knew that there was going to be ways to do this when the internet 23:56.400 --> 24:02.080 happened when it started to to pop onto the scene and I was introduced to the internet in 1980 24:03.680 --> 24:10.160 788 when it was you know there was no worldwide web yet to get a slip account in order to dial in 24:10.160 --> 24:14.880 it was all unix it was something completely different than what we see it today although 24:14.880 --> 24:19.040 structurally not really that different just it was presented in a different way we hadn't developed the 24:19.120 --> 24:27.280 web browser etc. I kept playing with ways to distribute audio was the most logical one because 24:27.280 --> 24:32.960 I've been a Mac guy all my life and I've been playing around with quick time for a long long time 24:32.960 --> 24:38.720 and understood editing and digital editing I got it completely you know it's a copy paste right 24:38.720 --> 24:44.960 that's that's really what editing is you don't need much more so since I since I was 14 I've 24:44.960 --> 24:50.400 basically been honing my chops on on this audio stuff and I remember when higher speed modems 24:50.400 --> 24:57.440 came out and my first company had just started up it was called on-ramp and the technology portion 24:57.440 --> 25:04.480 was based in an apartment in San Francisco where the guy who I'd met from son micro systems 25:04.480 --> 25:11.360 called Jacob and his brother Chris and so they had a couple of sun servers with a T1 line which 25:11.360 --> 25:16.560 was a big deal to get it into their apartment there and on in barca deero and we were you know 25:16.560 --> 25:22.080 serving up at that point not even yeah I think we just started serving up mosaic web pages that's 25:22.080 --> 25:32.000 right mosaic was out and I remember when the first 9600 bought modem came out and Carl would sit in 25:32.000 --> 25:39.520 San Francisco and through the I think was the PCM codec was basically streaming in real time audio 25:39.520 --> 25:43.840 to me now it would come through you know choppy and it would have to re-buffer and it would break 25:43.840 --> 25:47.920 but you know he had him on the phone he said okay check this out and he would start up a little 25:47.920 --> 25:53.440 units process they would be blasting out this you know in a one song or whatever I think I think 25:53.440 --> 25:58.000 was this I got I wish I remember what song it was and it would come through on the other end 25:58.000 --> 26:04.160 I was like god this is fantastic we just went across the country and it was transmitted through 26:04.160 --> 26:08.320 you know through these wires and I was freaking out I loved it I knew that it was going to happen 26:08.320 --> 26:13.440 now of course I didn't have any of the technical knowledge or understanding of what that you know 26:13.440 --> 26:19.040 what that really meant you know what the bandwidth considerations are what the scalability was 26:19.040 --> 26:25.680 of it all but it wasn't long after that that you know I had actual an actual office in New York 26:25.680 --> 26:32.480 had one employee Brad Sirling who we were sitting in an office together I got a call one day 26:33.760 --> 26:36.720 yeah I'm gonna finish this part of the story then I'm gonna have a quick lunch and I'll come back 26:36.800 --> 26:41.360 and I'll finish it I got a call one day from a guy he said hey look my name's Ron Bloom 26:43.760 --> 26:51.600 I'm in Los Angeles I think I have an idea and this is 1994 so I think I have an idea of how we can 26:53.120 --> 26:58.080 do something with the Grammys because I know the guys over at Narris the National Court Academy 26:58.080 --> 27:03.360 of Recording Arts and Sciences and I think that we could put together what he called a cybercast 27:03.440 --> 27:07.360 which was at the time you had simulcast remember those from the 80s we could watch the 27:07.360 --> 27:13.040 concert on TV and the radio station would broadcast it in a beautiful stereo sound 27:13.760 --> 27:17.840 said we could do something really cool where the Grammys are on TV and we'll provide a 27:17.840 --> 27:23.920 separate broadcast which will consist of web pages it will consist of pictures Casio just come out with 27:23.920 --> 27:30.080 their first digital consumer camera that they were trying to get into the marketplace and I said 27:30.320 --> 27:36.960 I think we can also interview and do some audio I'd also hooked up with progressive 27:36.960 --> 27:45.760 networks which was Rob Glazer's company before it became real networks and so he came into New York 27:45.760 --> 27:50.160 the next day you know we talked about the idea I said it's great I'll see you tomorrow in LA so we flew 27:50.160 --> 27:56.400 out to LA we went to the Grammys and we said hey you know we want the license to be able to do this 27:56.480 --> 28:05.040 cybercast and and really at the time the Grammys was you know there weren't troubles a very broken 28:05.040 --> 28:10.640 brand it was all you know considered old fashioned and certainly not hip and so they liked the idea 28:10.640 --> 28:14.960 and they said well that's fantastic we'll give you a license for a million dollars and we said hey 28:14.960 --> 28:20.720 that's really cool but we were thinking zero dollars because we have no money and we talked them into it 28:20.800 --> 28:26.880 and we were thinking that the way we would monetize it is that we could go to their existing 28:26.880 --> 28:32.000 sponsors and sell on a little sponsor ship and as we're walking out the door with our free license 28:32.000 --> 28:38.880 they said oh one more thing you can't approach our existing advertiser so we had a couple of months 28:38.880 --> 28:45.440 of real you know real starvation there trying to figure out how we were going to make this happen 28:45.440 --> 28:54.320 and we teamed up with a great sales company who media america who helped us sell this to advertisers 28:54.320 --> 29:02.480 of course was a lot of it was experimental budget at the time but we got it done and we had to drop 29:02.480 --> 29:07.760 a T1 into the shrine auditorium these days I'm sure the shrine auditorium has plenty of fiber all on 29:07.760 --> 29:13.680 its own you know we flew like a team of seven or eight out there all people who are you know 29:13.760 --> 29:18.160 still very dear to my heart and we've worked together for a long long time we had a great time three 29:18.160 --> 29:24.720 days of the Grammys and we were actually streaming audio and we were doing CUCMe if you recall that 29:24.720 --> 29:32.400 CUCMe video it was it was it was it was just fucking phenomenal we were creating content on the 29:32.400 --> 29:38.560 fly that was written it was pictures it was captions with the pictures it was streaming audio it was 29:38.560 --> 29:44.000 CUCMe it was all little bits and pieces but together it really made a beautiful broadcast environment 29:44.000 --> 29:49.440 it was a very exciting time for us and we went back after the Grammys and we just you know okay 29:49.440 --> 29:54.800 now everyone's gonna call every record producer all the artists all the labels the television 29:54.800 --> 29:59.600 stations anybody who has anything to do with content is going to is gonna start calling and we sat 29:59.600 --> 30:05.360 by the phone four days and heard nothing but fucking crickets not a single person called 30:06.320 --> 30:11.120 now we did actually start a company from that because we did at one call from a gentleman 30:11.120 --> 30:16.240 called Bob McColley who worked at the Anheiser Bush and he said he'd called up and he said hey 30:16.240 --> 30:20.960 I saw you guys at the Grammys we're really interested in some of this stuff and we'd like to know more 30:20.960 --> 30:25.200 and do you have you know do you provide these services and of course we put on our other 30:25.200 --> 30:30.880 hat and said well yes of course Mr. McColley we provide these services for you and we we essentially 30:31.040 --> 30:36.080 went out and to St. Louis and created Budweiser dot com that was the first of many initiatives 30:36.080 --> 30:40.000 but we were creating content we had the Bud guy on the road who went to all the races 30:41.360 --> 30:47.760 we had the born on date if you look at your Budweiser bottle or can you see that it says this 30:47.760 --> 30:53.040 beer was born on that was something that we that we came up with by um there's always been a 30:53.040 --> 31:00.320 barcode which can tell you down to the quarter hour when that actual beer rolled off the the assembly 31:00.400 --> 31:04.560 line and you could input that code into a little web app we had made and would tell you when 31:04.560 --> 31:10.560 your beer was born and that turned into an actual branded thing on the on the Budweiser cans and 31:10.560 --> 31:16.720 bottles so but that's beside the point there was it was just it was not going to happen we were 31:16.720 --> 31:22.080 not going to be able to create our own content and distributed and at that time I'd after MTV dot 31:22.080 --> 31:26.880 com we had metaverse dot com the vibe which was you know just all kinds of great stuff that we 31:26.960 --> 31:33.040 were putting together ourselves we had no way to monetize it except selling it through to corporate 31:33.760 --> 31:38.560 corporate entities who wanted to use that to make themselves more attractive to their core audience 31:39.360 --> 31:45.680 now that was what eleven years ago ten years ago and now and of course the the big problem was 31:45.680 --> 31:51.920 we really didn't have the audience there was no audience to speak of and now as we fast forward 31:52.400 --> 31:58.000 I think it was Peter Day actually let me I think I have this bit Peter Day the BBC 31:59.200 --> 32:02.400 he really said it right I'm going to you've heard this in a million times I'm going to play it for you 32:02.400 --> 32:07.760 again because I don't always think get that listen to what he says it is so true this is this is 32:09.040 --> 32:12.720 you know this guy's been in broadcasting for thirty five years listen to what he says 32:14.160 --> 32:20.400 something remarkable is happening here radio is springing free of the regulated gatekeepers who 32:20.480 --> 32:26.720 managed what you can hear since radio is invented it's jumping into the hands of anyone at all with 32:26.720 --> 32:33.680 something or nothing to say so exactly the gatekeepers and they're called gatekeepers but I don't 32:33.680 --> 32:39.200 think you know anyone who controls the frequencies that were allowed to broadcast on allowed to use 32:39.200 --> 32:44.400 for distribution they're not necessarily all evil but it's a big power game there's a lot of 32:44.400 --> 32:50.480 things that's stake in that so now with what we have we have the bandwidth to be able to do audio 32:50.480 --> 32:54.080 we certainly have the bandwidth for audio but only barely I'm telling you we're going to run into 32:54.080 --> 32:58.480 some interesting situations with bandwidth and we still have to figure out how to handle that better 32:58.480 --> 33:05.040 because there is a very definite cost attached to distributing this audio over the internet 33:05.920 --> 33:15.040 we have the iPods MP3 players we have this mobile mobile radio that we can take along and it's 33:15.040 --> 33:21.360 almost like history is repeating itself you see companies who have the radios they're investing in the 33:21.360 --> 33:30.560 pirates so you're seeing Apple trying to get podcasting into the mainstream audible is actually a 33:30.640 --> 33:35.440 pirate by themselves I would say initially they're you know but they have done a lot of work on 33:36.800 --> 33:42.400 on creating a lot of these well creating the first the first real player I think auto 33:42.400 --> 33:46.000 will can be credited with and bookmarking and all kinds of stuff like that but they really 33:46.000 --> 33:55.520 pioneered that space Microsoft real networks the distribution is about to blow open wide and what's 33:55.520 --> 34:01.600 interesting is that they're still and I think certainly also hear it at nomdex a lot of it's 34:01.600 --> 34:07.040 still about the technology audio just launched a public beta yesterday and I of course I'd 34:07.040 --> 34:10.560 signed up for an invite and I got in and although their creation tool isn't working yet 34:11.920 --> 34:20.320 they're providing a way for you to it's a sample to browse to sample and to subscribe to podcast 34:20.880 --> 34:24.720 and what was the most enjoyable thing you think oh well you know he's this is a competitor 34:24.800 --> 34:28.880 and I'm not gonna like what I see and how do we go and you know how do you fight these guys 34:28.880 --> 34:35.360 not true at all oh no way I've always said we have to bring in the listeners it has to be made 34:35.360 --> 34:41.840 easier we have to bring in the hundred million listeners in order for this to really start 34:41.840 --> 34:47.360 to to be something exciting and we're at that tipping point because what do I see on Odeo's home 34:47.360 --> 34:52.320 page I see the daily source code I see three other shows that were involved with all being 34:52.320 --> 34:57.360 distributed through Odeo so it's fantastic I couldn't be more happy about this stuff 35:01.760 --> 35:06.400 Apple is what they announced are doing something with the Sundance Festival 35:07.920 --> 35:13.600 Robert Redford and you know of course Apple has all these big Hollywood contacts that's great 35:13.600 --> 35:21.440 I want hundreds of millions of people to hear about podcasting and to go sample it wherever you can 35:21.520 --> 35:28.960 because my mission and our mission has always been to get this great content in to nurture this 35:28.960 --> 35:34.800 content help people who don't who have something to say who are communicators but don't know how to 35:34.800 --> 35:42.880 handle the technology don't know what to do with it maybe are just a bit intimidated by creating it 35:43.840 --> 35:50.240 that is that is where the magic is finally we can create our own content and get wide distribution 35:50.320 --> 35:55.280 and the good stuff does always rise to the top and when I say good stuff it's good stuff to you 35:55.280 --> 36:00.000 if you're looking for something and you're interested in a particular topic very much like 36:00.000 --> 36:04.800 web logs you'll find it it's going to flow through through a number of different ways of course 36:04.800 --> 36:09.920 there'll be some traditional marketing and advertising that that always helps I've been working 36:09.920 --> 36:14.960 very hard on pushing podcasting out to the public thank God we got a name for thank you 36:15.040 --> 36:20.640 Danny Grigwar we got a name that you know helped the the traditional press glam onto it 36:21.840 --> 36:27.680 and you're going to see in the next few weeks an incredible amount of traditional already existing 36:27.680 --> 36:33.600 content or people who are already stars and celebrities they will be podcasting they're 36:33.600 --> 36:40.240 it trust me I think the clear channel who own many thousands of radio stations 36:41.200 --> 36:46.080 that they're going to do a deal with it could be Apple I don't know that would make sense 36:46.080 --> 36:50.560 and they'll be podcasting all their stuff and that's great I want lots of people to come in 36:51.280 --> 36:55.840 where we're going to shine is when we start bringing stuff that you've never heard before 36:56.720 --> 37:02.800 and that's of course what people have really glomed on to particularly in the United States is 37:03.760 --> 37:13.200 this fresh content fresh ideas exciting ideas unregulated ideas boy that's a real big one there 37:13.920 --> 37:20.000 but also there's no time constraint except for the fact that I have a lunch hold on a second 37:20.000 --> 37:31.120 let me see what this is hello hello be right down okay shoot you know what you're just going to 37:31.120 --> 37:38.720 have to wait for another three seconds before I finish this up wow so what was only three seconds 37:38.720 --> 37:44.720 for you this is double time-shifting technology it worked my friends was three and a half hours for me 37:44.720 --> 37:52.880 I'm now back in my room the phone call you heard me get was uh Don Katz uh from audible and uh he's 37:52.960 --> 38:00.160 in Seattle and so we had a quick a well quick yeah like an hour long meeting over a quick lunch 38:01.360 --> 38:06.800 and after that I went to real networks who are located headquartered actually in Seattle 38:07.440 --> 38:13.920 Rob Glazer who well we talked about that earlier who have known for many many years and there's 38:13.920 --> 38:20.560 another company let's add a fourth to our list who are going to help us with our 100 million subscriber 38:20.640 --> 38:27.760 March 100 million listener March and we have a ways to go but I can't tell you how excited I am 38:27.760 --> 38:36.400 about all these companies that are basically going to open up the path to listeners and it's going to 38:36.400 --> 38:43.360 be very interesting let me give you some numbers here for a second um and we're already at about 37 38:43.360 --> 38:50.320 30 eight minutes I think yeah 38 almost 39 minutes I want to wrap it up pretty quick um according 38:50.320 --> 39:02.240 to a article I read today Apple iTunes so this iTunes music store reached 1.7 million households 39:02.240 --> 39:09.360 in March okay seems like a big number it's a spit in the bucket when it comes to what broadcast 39:09.360 --> 39:14.320 radio and television networks reach it's really nothing I think we've discussed the Wall Street 39:14.320 --> 39:20.640 journals reporting earlier that all online music sales all online music sales that includes 39:20.640 --> 39:27.360 rhapsody that includes iTunes music store it's it's anything you can find that sells music online 39:27.920 --> 39:34.320 is only about 2% of the entire sales of the whole music business so we've got quite a ways to go 39:35.200 --> 39:40.960 and what we're going to see is that as listenership opens up and it's going to be up to you I mean 39:41.040 --> 39:47.120 this is the beauty of it is if you want to just create a show I think every every podcast has a minimum 39:47.120 --> 39:53.280 of 10 listeners because that's going to be your friends your family you know your your boy scout 39:53.280 --> 39:58.560 group whatever it is you know and which of course will be very feasible to do very economical 39:59.520 --> 40:04.480 because you just it's you know those prices are coming down fast enough and there's some great 40:04.480 --> 40:12.320 services out there of which pod show also would be providing services but if you want to 40:13.440 --> 40:21.120 really go out aggressively and get listeners and it's one thing to do it in a if you're like a 40:21.120 --> 40:25.520 a common entertainment base show and you just want to have a broad appeal which I think is very hard 40:25.520 --> 40:31.760 to do by the way it's very hard to appeal to a big mass audience or if you're doing a beer cast 40:31.920 --> 40:36.480 and you just want to talk about beer your your listenership is going to grow let me just give you 40:36.480 --> 40:42.080 some other numbers the daily source code which has currently approximately a hundred thousand 40:42.080 --> 40:48.000 downloads per show a hundred thousand downloads per show of which the numbers actually increased a little 40:48.000 --> 40:56.400 bit now it's about 25 to 27 percent of the daily downloads are through subscription which means 40:56.400 --> 41:03.760 it's automatic that costs me or pod show in this case about three hundred fifty dollars a day 41:04.800 --> 41:12.080 okay so it's not free and and there's many many ways that that can be dealt with and many many 41:12.080 --> 41:18.080 economic models that can be put into place lots of them and that's exactly what we're working on 41:18.080 --> 41:22.880 with all of these companies which is why I'm happy to talk to all these companies and 41:23.840 --> 41:30.880 people have different motives different reasons for going out and doing podcasts and actually going for a bigger 41:30.880 --> 41:38.720 audience some is for promotion of something some will be because of the nature of it you can say 41:38.720 --> 41:44.480 what you want be free and some will maybe you know have ulterior motives and deals actually let me I 41:44.480 --> 41:51.040 want to you know give you a quick little taste of a podcast that is a co-production that we're doing 41:51.120 --> 42:00.080 that will be launching in the next week or so it's Spike Lee just listen to a little bit of the Spike Lee 42:00.480 --> 42:06.240 podcast and I think he'll he'll totally get it how what how he's using this medium here he comes 42:07.120 --> 42:14.000 we want to make the best fucking film post wait a minute what did that stop oh is that my 42:14.000 --> 42:22.640 Mac again acting up of course this is interesting I mean people ask me what's the worst thing 42:22.640 --> 42:28.480 as a director and a lot of times I make a knowledge between sports and films because also two 42:28.480 --> 42:34.720 of my interest but the worst thing in sports is when you have an athlete only cares about his 42:34.720 --> 42:41.520 statistics the team is about me me me how many points I'm gonna shoot I'm gonna shoot 42:42.000 --> 42:47.200 Kobe Bryant it's pretty cool how many balls that don't me now listen carefully because in this is this is really 42:47.200 --> 42:52.640 Spike Lee doing a podcast you know he's just talking in the unedited voice of Spike and it's in his 42:53.040 --> 42:58.240 production office in Brooklyn and you can hear the air conditioner running in the background so I can 42:58.240 --> 43:08.320 like a hot summer day and act and then film it's like the act who so Spike is another person who is 43:09.280 --> 43:14.240 sorry about that that was my microphone and I just just don't want to put that right on oh 43:14.960 --> 43:21.280 there's another guy who is who's on a mission and I think that we're we're here at nomdex 43:21.280 --> 43:27.600 and there's a lot of excitement building it's a very geeky a lot of it's about RSS 43:29.040 --> 43:35.600 Microsoft will be announcing their plans with RSS now I know exactly what it is I was asked not to 43:35.680 --> 43:40.240 talk about it it seems that it's pretty much common knowledge and a lot of people were told with their plans were 43:42.320 --> 43:49.600 audible will be making an interesting announcement also involving podcasts subscriptions and RSS 43:51.680 --> 43:58.000 look for big big big Hollywood companies to come in I don't know if I can't remember if we talk about this 43:58.000 --> 44:02.800 but I'm sure that clear channel yeah I do we talk we did talk about this who own all these 44:02.960 --> 44:08.560 radio stations they're going to be taking their content and podcasting it that's great you know that's 44:08.560 --> 44:15.040 fantastic but if you look at those numbers and you see that we have an audience that is growing but we 44:15.040 --> 44:23.760 need to move towards the hundred million listeners where is the next great content going to come from 44:24.800 --> 44:30.960 it's going to come from you it's going to come from all of us who have ideas who want to get those 44:30.960 --> 44:37.360 ideas out who want to share with people and you know it may you may be intimidated by the technology 44:38.000 --> 44:45.760 you may not have all the pieces together for the format and if you want to monetize it commercialize it 44:47.280 --> 44:53.760 that's what I want you to come to us for come to pod show for that send an email to atamercareer.com 44:53.760 --> 45:01.040 and be more than happy to help help you out because the listeners are coming the hundred million 45:01.040 --> 45:07.920 listener march is on its way I think it has already been underway but after nomdex there's going to be a 45:07.920 --> 45:13.760 lot of heat and a lot of big companies mentioned them all in this podcast who will all be moving 45:13.760 --> 45:21.600 towards bringing their existing listeners in exciting new listeners to come in and when they come in 45:21.680 --> 45:26.480 it's not going to be just about content you could have heard on the radio it's going to be about 45:26.480 --> 45:36.560 this fresh new exciting group of voices that have great ideas and just haven't had the opportunity 45:36.560 --> 45:43.680 to get it out there or may not even have known that the opportunity existed so that said we're going 45:43.680 --> 45:51.520 to wrap this up we have the registration party which I think Google is throwing and kind of the 45:51.520 --> 45:55.360 get together the evening around seven or eight o'clock so I'm going to go to that and of course 45:55.360 --> 46:00.400 I will have more to report as I will be podcasting from from nomdex in Seattle 46:02.320 --> 46:07.520 stay subscribed daily source code dot com if if you haven't done so already you can definitely send me 46:07.520 --> 46:11.120 feedback because I said add them at curry dot com and if you got some ideas and you want to 46:12.080 --> 46:17.200 be there for the hundred million listeners that are going to show up soon then 46:18.560 --> 46:23.360 you know who to contact and with that I will end with our signature 46:33.040 --> 46:36.640 another pod show podcast stick it in your ear 46:41.120 --> 46:51.600 you