In this episode, Mikayla and Michael will discuss Google’s decision to remove aspects of its product mix, the uncertainty of TikTok’s place in America, and how COVID has impacted Podcasting as a content form.

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Mikayla: Hello listeners, and welcome to the Tech in the Arts Let’s Talk episode for August, brought to you by the Arts Management and Technology Lab at CMU. I am Mikayla Dimick, a summer content creator and Master of Entertainment Industry Management student at CMU. Today I am joined by AMT Lab’s Podcast Producer and Technology Manager, Michael Butler.

How are you today Michael?

Michael: Hi, Mikayla. I'm good. thank you for hosting this month’s Let’s talk!

Mikayla: Each month, we bring you trending stories and discussions with the goal of exchanging ideas, bringing awareness, and staying on top of the trends.

In this episode, we will discuss Google’s decision to remove aspects of its product mix, the uncertainty of TikTok’s place in America, and how COVID has impacted Podcasting as a content form.

Moving into our first major topic, we will be taking a close look at Google and other properties they own, focusing on how they have been narrowing their digital offerings and features used by their consumers. During the current economic environment we are all living in, it makes sense for companies to look at what services and products they should focus their resources on and which they should cut, but there are both positive and negative implications for both.

However, Google has developed a slight notoriety for cancelling ambitious technology projects, even before the economy took a sharp downward turn this year. Such projects include the Google Glasses, messaging system Google Allo, and their failed social media platform, Google+. More information about what projects or services Google has cancelled can be found at killedbygoogle.com, which explains each project and their timelines of operation.

In the case of Google+, previous users have recently been emailed about their potential to be compensated through a $7.5 million class action lawsuit settlement. The cause of this lawsuit stemmed from how the platform “experienced software bugs between 2015 and 2018, which allowed app developers to access certain Google+ profile field information in an unintended manner,” which, along with the platform’s lack of popularity, ultimately lead to Google’s decision to axe the platform entirely.

When looking at Google Play Music, the latest service on the metaphorical chopping block, lack of market share in the digital audio streaming sector appears to be the platform’s downfall. The app lagged behind competitors such as Spotify and Apple Music making it a less favorable property for Google to put resources into, as it would only keep the service on life support if no added innovations or differentiators were added in the near future.

However, there are aspects of cancelled services offered by Google and its subsidiaries that may benefit a marginalized population and should be saved or reinstated, despite not being used as often as the general public. Such services include Youtube’s user-generated closed captioning feature, which aids in deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals that use the platform. Google made this decision due to the feature being “rarely used and had problems with spam/abuse,” but community members disagree with this due to two main points: accessibility for audiences and affordability for creators. According to an article done by the Verge, “deaf and hard-of-hearing creators say removing the community captions feature will stifle accessibility, and they want to see the company try to fix the issues with volunteer-created captions, rather than doing away with them entirely … community captions were an “accessibility tool that not only allowed deaf and hard of hearing people to watch videos with captions, but allowed creators that could not afford to financially invest in captions.”

This opens a compelling dialogue about the trial and error needed to find success in the tech industry and how consumers are impacted by this process. How do you feel about these recent changes, Michael?

Michael: Yeah, so the closed captioning changes in particular are a step in the wrong direction. They aren’t doing away with captions altogether though. The auto generated and manual caption options will still be there and continue to improve. Speech recognition has some unfortunate issues with accents and background noises, so it will definitely still hurt some communities. There are always work around for these types of issues though, such as the free 6 month subscription they are offering to creators affected by this. That could be a bit of a stop gap while a creator sets up the infrastructure needed to support this.

I don’t know all of the tools that the YouTube content owners have, but it is a system that allows multiple account to access and modify content on a channel. I would assume there is an option to limit their access to subtitles only, and if not maybe that is a solution google could employ here. Then channel owners would be able to authorize a couple or few community members or volunteers to edit the transcriptions. That kind of sits wrong with me, because in most cases the content creator isn’t going to be able to pay for the work and then its asking someone to work for free, but to a degree people were doing this anyway. My hope is that they do have something in the works, but they are keeping a lid on it to avoid backlash if it falls through.

I’ve done subtitling for a couple of my own hobby videos and for work videos, and I also do transcriptions for the podcasts I’ve edited, so I know how time consuming it can be and for some types of people it is just painful to do.

Mikayla: Yeah, I agree. Those are some very good points that you've made Michael some great insights. And that also makes me wonder what. To what extent do you think that privately held companies such as Google should fund projects that are not widespread or profitable, but may have a socially beneficial impact?

Michael:  So, first I’m going to revisit the trial and error portion for a second, and yes there will be a lot of technologies that fail and most we will never hear of. Since my focus is games, it is where I have the most knowledge, so I’m going to use that as a framework here. One of my ongoing personal projects is working on improving production pipelines, project success rate, and worker satisfaction. The information may be a little out of date, because I haven’t worked on it in awhile, but I think it gives a good snapshot of the recent past. Studios are always cancelling projects for a variety of reasons its pretty common and most of the projects we will never hear about. Some developers polled were working on 6-8 projects per project that was actually announced and released. I’m sure some of these are cut early, but many projects will get to a fairly playable state before being cut. So its important to be adaptable and have an infrastructure that can support trial and error with a minimal wasted investment.

On what I think about social good projects, it is definitely in a company’s best interest to try something new. That being said maybe there needs to be a government incentive for these companies to do social good projects or do more of them. A lot of these companies do invest in those types of technologies and events, even if the primary focus is to improve their own public opinion. In the end it is helping a portion of people and making tech that can be used as a stepping stone for the next innovator. Google in particular is an ad servicing company at its core, they provide so much content that vastly improves our way of life. I know I’m paying for it with my personal data and I’m OK with that, but I’m not someone who is overly concerned with data privacy. I do think they also get a much better end of the deal than we do, but I would hate to do something like moving across country on a super small budget without google maps. I would have a lot less entertainment options without a platform like YouTube. Most of the kinds of content I like to watch and listen to wouldn’t exist without them having popularized the platform. That being said, I think they, like any individual or company, still need to be held accountable for social issues and policies, because they are almost an essential service at this point, and it is pretty worrying that some of these giant tech companies hold so much power and it just keeps growing.

Mikayla: Yeah, those are again, great insights. I appreciate your knowledge in this area and your reasoning behind them. All right. So now we're going to move on to the topic of TikTok’s Future in the United States.

Back in 2019, various tech companies were finding themselves in hot water in regards to collecting the data of minors under 13 years of age. While this did affect American owned and operated companies, including Youtube, a notable violator was the Chinese-lead Tiktok. The company was forced to pay $5.7 million to settle allegations, which were sourced from the musically app. Another Chinese owned company that was bought by TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, in 2017. According to said allegations, Musically had been “collecting and exposing the location of young children. Despite receiving thousands of complaints from parents, the company failed to comply with requests to delete information about underage children and held onto it longer than necessary.” As a part of the lawsuit, TikTok has been required to delete all videos created by underage users and also elected to create a separate app experience with a heightened security protocol for these users.

Since then, TikTok has prided itself on its recommendation algorithm, which is similar to YouTube, in the sense that it suggests videos based on a user’s engagement, discovering trends about said user’s interests and showing more content relating to those topics. However, even the company itself has discussed the repercussions of this system, stating “By optimizing for personalization and relevance, there is a risk of presenting an increasingly homogeneous stream of videos.” More information about the inner workings of this algorithm can be found at the linked Verge article. While this can cause innocent issues such as showing a user an overabundance of cat videos or dance trends, it can also unintentionally filter out content created by marginalized groups such as the BLM movement and the LGBTQ+ community. This again shadows criticisms of Youtube’s algorithm, which has even prompted a lawsuit from LGBT creators focused on allegations that their content was filtered under “restricted mode.” However, Tiktok has been open with restricting content, reasoning that it was a short term solution to on-platform bullying.

The use of TikTok soon entered the realm of digital marketing, with even the Carnegie Museum of Natural History opening an account, where a curator would tell jokes. In the world of non-profits, strategies involving the participation in “hashtag challenges,” collaborating with the TikTok for Good Initiative, and donation stickers introduced to the platform in April of 2020. However, these strategies may no longer be a viable marketing plan, as Donald Trump has signed an executive order on August 6th to ban the company from operating in the United States.

This order has given ByteDance 45 days to either sell the company to US owners or to cease operation completely. The source of this order was rooted in the concerns of data security and censorship that hides “political and historical content deemed controversial.” However, Bytedance has responded by stating that “it had stopped using those moderation policies back in May 2019 and would up its transparency.” So while TikTok is collecting data, it is doing so in a manner that is similar to how American companies operate. The manner of how this ban will be enacted is uncertain, but there is talk of using federal power to deplatform the app, putting it on an entity list that prevents American companies from working with it, and preventing new users from downloading the app.

In response, American users of TikTok have responded to this order in a negative fashion, with Ashleigh Hunniford, a 17 year old with over 400,000 followers on the platform stating “I think this will drastically affect political commentary among teenagers ,,, TikTok is an outlet for a lot of protest and activism and people talking about their political beliefs. Banning that would not carry well among people my age.”

How do you feel that this ban could affect other domestic or foreign digital products or services? Could banning such apps in the name of censorship be a form of censorship itself?

Michael: It is absolutely censorship. My short answer to this will be that as long as the laws are being followed in regards to a country's data handling, it should be allowed to operate a quote from take talks, press release on the matter.

We store all take talk U S user data in the United States with backup redundancy in Singapore, our data centers are located entirely outside of China, and none of our data is subject to Chinese law. If that quote is true, then I think the order needs to be rescinded. I do also think most countries are still behind when it comes to data handling laws and tech-related loss in general, which is definitely a major problem.

Thankfully this order doesn't impact all the other services and products owned by the companies, uh, bite dance and Tencent, but it is a pretty big deal. Tencent in particular is a major multimedia investor and that could have major ripples. I think it's a drastic step that will. Hopefully be watched back, but it will also hopefully awareness and more conversation on what should be reasonably done in regards to policy.

Having brought up censorship though, there is a whole big bag of worms to dive into there regarding algorithms, content, suppression, and content creator protections. If we have extra time, it might be worth circling back to that conversation at the end of the show.

Mikayla: I agree. That’s definitely something that if we have time that I would be interested in talking about further and if not I actually am writing in article completely about TikTok and how this executive order came into existence. So. Be sure to keep an eye out on that in the near future as well.

Michael: Yeah. That sounds like it'll be an interesting read.

Mikayla: Yes. It's definitely been an interesting research to say the least. And it also kind of reminds me of another question I had, which would be, do you think arts entertainment organizations should continue to use this app or to look for other platforms that offer a similar experience or service? In the event that TikTok does happen to be banned completely in the United States.

Michael: organizations I absolutely think you should be on these apps, anything new that gains traction you should try to make a presence on. Technology will not slow down for those trying to catch up and if you want to reach future audiences you have to be on their platforms. For example people around my age you are probably going to reach more on Facebook and people my little sisters age you are going to reach on TikTok. But Arts and Entertainment is for everyone so it needs to be everywhere it can be. Now with my two cents in there, I definitely understand protesting a platform with valid reason, I don’t think the platform should be abandoned, but in the posts on that platform it should promote other places to reach more of the organization’s content to the userbase that primarily stays on the protested platform.

Mikayla: I really liked that perspective, Michael, I think it's a good way to look at how the arts and entertainment world needs to interact with its audiences and also interact with the platforms that it may or may not take residence on.

One industry that has seen a boom since the world of social distancing and quarantine became the norm has been podcasting. This makes sense, as with the increase of audiences looking for more content to consume and creators finding themselves with more time, the stars have aligned for this content form. Spotify, the streaming company operated out of Sweden stated that in April 2020, “it had nearly 150,000 podcast uploads … 69% higher than February and the largest monthly increase in Spotify’s podcast catalog.” This increase can be attributed to how podcasting “can be produced remotely without crews,” meaning that they can continue production as normal, unlike other entertainment forms that require actors to film together or audiences to be in-person.

Michael, as our Technology manager, what would you recommend to creators that may consider creating a podcast show of their own?

Michael:  So for podcasts it’s a bit interesting. It seems like all countries have had a spike in production, but not listening. It is great to have the hours back a week that someone might spend on commuting and that can be translated into doing other projects, like podcasts. But overall listens in the US dipped by about 20% when quarantine started. Recently they have begun to rise back up to pre-pandemic levels, which is good news.

Mikayla: Great answer. That’s interesting to consider. Another interesting thing would be the few liabilities that the podcast industry is seeing right now. Typically, podcast listeners will listen to podcasts at home or during their daily commute. However, with the quarantine in place and people working from home, commuting has become less common. As a result, some forms of podcasts listing are up, certain avenues of ad revenue have decreased, with business such as travel-related businesses cutting ads.

Do you feel that these changes will impact what topics new and existing podcasts will be discussing throughout the impacts of COVID-19 in order to attract advertisers?

Michael:  The listening habits seemed to have shifted the topics that are receiving more ears. So some shows that want to cater to that style may shift their topics but for the shows I like to consume they have a target market and tend to stick to it. In the US as of April though I think design, food, music, and medicine focused shows did saw a spike in listeners.

Advertisement is a trickier subject. I know ad revenue tends to fluctuate with the seasons, and it depends on the monetization model the platform is using. If a show is just using youtube ad revenue they probably aren’t making much at the moment. In theory there are more people consuming content then normal, but they have less disposable income in general. So I’d think you really only want to market to the right niches and avoid being associated with articles dealing with death counts for covid for example. I was reading in the NY Times a month or so ago some companies were reporting up to 60% decrease in quarter 2 on ad revenue. It is definitely a topic worth a deep dive into, but my surface knowledge isn’t quite up to par on this one.

Mikayla: All right. Well, why don't we dive into something that your knowledge does have a little bit more of a impact in, which would be what podcasting hardware or software would you recommend for incoming podcasters or maybe current podcasters looking to increase the quality of their work.

Michael:  So this question will go back to what I was talking about at the end of the last Let’s Talk. It is going to depend on use case, and I know I mention my article series was coming soon last episode, and didn’t come out yet, but it will be soon I promise! I go over terminology in depth there for more situations, but I’m going to make some assumptions for these recommendations. First off, I’m going to assume most people are producing remotely and in a home environment without a dedicated studio space. So you will need a microphone that doesn’t pick up a lot of background noise. A good choice for this would be a Dynamic microphone like the Rode Procaster. It would do a lot to cancel out the background noise in the environment.

I’m using a Blue Yeti, which is a universal recommendation for people jumping in or upping their game without a huge investment. It has great vocal quality but picks up background noise pretty easily. It is also a USB mic which saves on requiring an interface.

Interfaces are for using an XLR mic with a computer. I use a Behringer U-PHORIA UMC404HD. It has 4 xlr inputs and will record multitrack, but there are other versions that only have one input if you don’t think you’ll ever be recording more than yourself in person. The UMC204 HD I think is the 2 xlr input version.

The setup I have for Mikayla is a Blue Ember and is using the UMC404HD.

Software wise, I have a creative cloud subscription through the university so I use the adobe suite. Editing in Audition took awhile for me to learn the nuances of, but there are a lot of tutorials and it is easy to learn the basics in. It also does Multi track recording with less hassle. Audacity is my go to for quick single track recordings and can edit a show no problem, it is free and the go to for free software.

There are additional all in one packages like Descript. I haven’t used it much but it seemed alright for some styles of shows. Personally I don’t like the work flow in it, but it has a fairly generous free trial. I used them for some transcripts as well, and it, speaker recognition is pretty lacking. So a lot of the time it will think the same person is continuing to talk, especially actually with lower quality recordings, but it has understood the words that were spoken pretty well and pretty much as well as any other service I've used, which includes, Otter AI.

When uploading it is good to have an RSS feed that you can direct Spotify, Apple, or any of service to. I have a personal website through Squarespace so I use that to host my feed. You can also pay for something like Libsyn, which will include a ton of analytics and embed players for anyone getting super serious. Otherwise you will need to aggregate the data yourself for analyses.

For live shows I would recommend streaming to Twitch. There is also YouTube live, but I have some personal gripes with it at the moment. That being said if it is a video show that is one of your only realistic options for hosting the VOD after the live recording.

Most people use OBS for streaming, it is free and has a great feature set. I purchased a lifelong XSplit license when it first released, so that is always my go to. They also have a free version, but I’m not sure what features are excluded. Both programs also allow for recording locally.

For actual meetings there are a lot of options. I don’t air anything live and I make my guests and cohosts use audacity to record sound locally, so I only need the meeting to be stable and allow the audio/video to come through for me to respond. I am fine using Discord, Zoom, or Skype for that. For a video show you will probably want to lean towards Zoom or Skype as cheaper or free options. Zencaster is something that the previous podcast producer here used, but I haven’t messed with it.

Mikayla: Wow, there's definitely a lot to consider behind the scenes of podcasting.

So I'm sure that anyone looking to either create or better their show will really appreciate those insights. And finally, I have. One more question for you, Michael. Do you think that the momentum that podcasting is seeing right now will continue into the future and regardless of your answer, what strategies do you see being successful or unsuccessful in this time?

Michael: As a medium younger audiences are more heavily engaged with podcasts, so as they age and other generations come up it I will expect it to become a stronger medium. It is also a good entertainment for multi-tasking, so as long as that is a norm I think it will stay strong. I don’t particularly have any suggestions for strategy. There are tried and true formats which work for certain audience and show types. One important thing is to be enthusiastic about the subject area, whether its tech, sports, politics, pop culture. After you have the subject are figure out what type of audience you want to attract, and see what type of content they are interested in.

But I think overall. Just get out there and do it. Have fun with it, it's a fun medium.

Mikayla: Great. I think that is a nice positive note to end this podcast on. I think everyone is about ready. It's evening here to go enjoy some cooler weather without the a hundred degree sun. And I just like to thank you for joining me today. Michael it’s good to hear your voice.

Michael: Thanks for hosting again.

Mikayla: Not a problem. And we will catch everyone listening in our next let’s talk episode.

Michael: Well, we won't, but the next set of producers and content creators will

Mikayla: This is true, but I. Believe that everyone listening will enjoy what the fall has to offer.

And we wish everyone listening. Great day stay well in all this crazy. And we'll see you next time.

Alyssa: Thanks for listening to the Arts Management and Technology Lab podcast series. You can read more on the intersection between the arts and technology at www.amt-lab.org Or, you can listen to more interviews and discussions in our podcast series on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or Stitcher. Thank you for joining us.

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