Justin is CEO and co-founder of Transistor — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
Justin Jackson: At the Podcast Standards Project, we’ve been talking about video from the beginning. Back in 2022 our first blog post mentions adding video, more support for video. And we really ramped up discussions and demos and specs for HLS video in 2025. So even back in August, I said that having Apple Podcasts adopt HLS video would legitimize the standard and likely trigger widespread adoption across the entire podcast ecosystem. So here it is.
It was a surprise. No advanced warning aside from a few select launch partners that they had. But overall, I think this is going to be good. Overall, I am pleased. It’s nice to see Apple moving in this direction. It’s a very different approach than Spotify and YouTube. It’s a bit of a different approach than we were hoping for. But I think on the whole, this is good news for the open podcast ecosystem.
Sam Sethi: I don’t think what we got from Apple yesterday was everything we wanted.
JJ: Yeah, I think this will be throughout the Apple Podcasts app only [and not open RSS]. We often criticize Apple and I think it’s harder inside that machine than we give them credit for. And I think they have lots of constraints on their side. For example, I don’t think they’re being malicious when they hold back information until launch day. It does really suck. They told all podcast creators that it’s coming. And so then, of course, every podcast hosting platform is going to get inundated with customer support requests saying, hey, do you offer this yet? But I think they’ve got a lot of constraints on their side. So I can appreciate that.
I think this is just the first announcement. For example, this does not preclude them from eventually supporting HLS video in the alternate enclosure tag [via open RSS]. Video has lots of difficult implementation factors like what are we going to do about explicit material? What are we going to do about truly horrendous material that can be images that could be uploaded as video? There’s a lot of things to figure out there. So yeah, kudos to them for this initial launch.
The ultimate test is that creators have to care. And so I think this is something else I’ve been thinking about a lot. We, as the ecosystem, and the industry, and as well-meaning stewards of the open standard, could say This Is The Way It Should Be. But if creators don’t use it, and if consumers don’t care, then it doesn’t really matter what we implement. It doesn’t even matter if Apple supports it. Apple is a big deal because they’ve got a lot of reach and they’ve got a big install base. But unless creators start using HLS video and adding those podcasts to Apple, and then unless consumers start enjoying that video and watching it, then it doesn’t matter what we want, what we care about, what we’re trying to push.
What’s exciting is that I think in open ecosystem, we’ve been looking for a big platform partner that can at least give us a chance to get the distribution. They emailed all of their podcast creators saying this is happening. It’s in the discussion. People were talking about it on Reddit. We got lots of customers asking us about it. I was on holiday - the reason I found out is because customers were messaging me personally saying, hey, are you going to support this? So they have a lot of distribution with creators. And if they do the implementation right on the consumer side, and if they eventually add this to Apple TV and their whole ecosystem, this has a good chance of at least seeing if consumers care. And so yeah, I’ll be looking at that, I think. But yeah, not everything we wanted, but I think it’s a good first step.
SS: I had a really interesting question yesterday on LinkedIn - somebody asked me: “Should I just produce video only now and let Apple, Spotify and YouTube use the video? And then they will switch it to audio in terms of just removing the visual image. And therefore, do no longer need to do an audio edit as well?”
JJ: This is actually one of those big unanswered questions. The way it works on [podcast app] TrueFans, is if you’re streaming HLS video and you switch to the audio version, it actually switches to the audio enclosure. I think the most important things especially for the open podcast ecosystem is we need to get out of the theoretical as soon as possible and into the real as soon as possible. So as soon as we released a test of HLS video podcasts, Stephen Robles, who has the Primary Technology Podcast, was one of the first people to adopt it. He’s like: “I’m going to use that HLS enclosure on transistor.” And then he was like, “But wait a second. I produce a separate audio version. That’s very distinct from my video version. But on TrueFans and Fountain, when you switch between them, it’s not one for one. The length of the file isn’t the same.” And so now we have a power user that’s saying “this doesn’t really work for me”. However, the paradigm that emerged on Spotify is switch between audio and video. And they’ve kept that paradigm and they’re testing a lot of things. And their consumers apparently like that feature on Spotify. YouTube Music also launched with that same feature. And people apparently like that feature on YouTube Music.
From a creator’s perspective, I often think about like the 80, 90, 95, 98% of podcasts, like 95% of podcasts are currently getting under a thousand downloads per episode. What about them? What are they going to do? And I think we, we often focus on the top end of the market. Like what are the top 20 podcasts and who are the power users like Steven Robles? And what do they want? But the reality is, especially for the open ecosystem, we have to care about that 95% who are just making a podcast for fun or just making a podcast to make a little bit of money or just making a Dungeons and Dragons podcast because they want to do something fun with their friends. What are they going to do? I think most creators are just going to want to upload one video file and have that be their podcast. And yes, all of the audio nerds are going to be like, you can’t do that. You need to craft that, the audio just for audio. And sure, obviously on the upper end of the market, people have all sorts of opinions, but the vast majority of creators, I think if they’re going to do video are going to want to upload one video file. And by the way, they’re going to want it distributed to YouTube and Spotify.
And what’s exciting about this Apple announcement is at least gives us an option in the open ecosystem that they can take if they want it.
In the surveys we’ve done of Transistor customers, most creators are recording video already. If you’re doing it already, all you have to do then is switch your editing technique to now, instead of editing the audio waveform, I’m editing the video and audio waveform at the same time. What I have been advising creators is just create a video, and edit that, export the video, export the audio, that’s your podcast, they’re the same length, they’re the same thing. And I think especially with this switching paradigm, having a separate audio version from video version, I don’t know what we’re gonna do about that. But from the app side, they’ve got to solve that problem. I think they’re just gonna be: “if they start watching the video, we’re just gonna switch. And they turn off their screen, we’re going to continue to use that video version.” Can’t see another way of managing that problem.
SS: What’s interesting about the announcement is YouTube and Spotify have promised dynamic ad insertion for a while, but neither have delivered it. Apple have leapfrogged that - saying they will do DAI through their partners.
JJ: YouTube is already doing dynamic ads of some sort with a select few of their creators. So they might not be that far behind. Yeah, it’ll be really interesting. It was interesting to see who showed up for all of those HLS discussions that the Podcast Standards Project held. Because all of a sudden, folks from the industry that had never attended a meeting were attending. And a lot of them were from the large ad network companies.
And I think from their perspective, they’re thinking, how are we going to battle these walled gardens? If people are now uploading to Spotify, and that takes them out of the dynamic ad insertion pipeline and takes them out of our ability to track downloads. And if people are uploading to YouTube, while we can’t dynamically insert ads in there at all, they’re getting squeezed out. And so I think, from their perspective, this Apple announcement is very interesting because it gives them a place to do that. Often we talk about the podcasting market using overall averages, like overall Spotify is that, I don’t know, 36%, and Apple’s at 15% and YouTube’s at whatever. But when you actually slice up, for example, the top 20 podcasts, a lot of them, their primary audience is on Apple. That audience also often skews their higher value consumer for target ads too.
But listen, there’s multiple ad markets now. Advertisers have lots of options and they make all sorts of decisions based on all sorts of criteria. Like they could spend money on Google AdWords, they can spend money on ads on ChatGPT. They can spend money on ads on Amazon prime. So they have a lot of options and they’re going to choose whatever’s giving them results. So if, if all of a sudden, I don’t know, Triton is selling ads, add impressions on Apple podcast video, and those are delivering really good return on investment, then people will keep it. If it doesn’t, then they’ll put their money in YouTube - YouTube ads are fairly easy to book. YouTube’s ad platform is definitely has a lot of advantages as well. But the problem on YouTube is that a lot of kind of the desirable customers are paying for YouTube Premium.
I just want to bring up again, which I think is important, is ultimately this has to be creator driven. Creators have to want to use these features. And you see it on the podcast hosting site all the time. We have all these things that they can use, they can build themselves a little website. And they can even choose a different theme on that website. What do most people do? Most people choose just whatever is the first website theme we give them. That’s what they choose. Same colors, everything. They don’t modify anything.
And so what can we prioritize in terms of what do most creators want most of the time? What do 95% of podcasters want? And what could we even realistically get them to do? And there’s a lot of folks doing video, so it makes sense for us to do something with video.
I think this is an exciting time for the Podcast Standards Project. Because now, it’s like, okay, it was always Apple’s fault for not doing anything. Well now, Apple has started doing things. And again, in my conversations with Spotify and even YouTube, there’s opportunities there as well. I don’t think they’re as opposed to things as we think.
All we have to do as an open ecosystem is make the best possible case, the honest case that creators are actually asking for it. This is something creators want. This is something that a lot of creators want. This is something that a lot of listeners want. And if we can make that case, I think that’s what became compelling about video is that we could say, well, creators want it and consumers want it. And so it becomes a lot more palatable if there’s evidence of demand.