Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and Way back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen, I did an episode titled text
Speaker 1: Stuff Twitches about the video streaming service catering primarily to
Speaker 1: gamers called Twitch dot tv. But it's time for an
Speaker 1: update as since that time a lot has happened, and
Speaker 1: this year we've seen some big names on Twitch leave,
Speaker 1: a couple of them return, one of them got banned
Speaker 1: for some reason. So today I thought we'd really dive
Speaker 1: into the topic and learn more about Twitch, go into
Speaker 1: a deeper dive than our previous episode, and learn how
Speaker 1: a select percentage of users have become millionaires and what's
Speaker 1: going on with all this moving around or, as I
Speaker 1: like to call it, the old twitch a rue. So
Speaker 1: before there was Twitch, there was Justin dot tv, founded
Speaker 1: by Justin Kahn. Now, way back in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: which would be the same year that YouTube would launch,
Speaker 1: Kahn was working on an interesting experiment in his copious
Speaker 1: spare time, as he was also pursuing degrees in physics
Speaker 1: and psychology at Yale, so clearly he's a bit of
Speaker 1: a busy body. He had already launched a business called
Speaker 1: Keiko Software, which was an online calendar program, but that
Speaker 1: business wasn't really a money maker, and so Con did
Speaker 1: the sensible thing. He auctioned it off on eBay for
Speaker 1: reels that brought in a quarter of a million dollars.
Speaker 1: His next attempt grew out of a project at y Combinator.
Speaker 1: This company is a startup accelerator, which essentially means it's
Speaker 1: sir to provide seed money to start up ventures in
Speaker 1: an effort to get them up and running enough so
Speaker 1: that they can then seek out more substantial investors. And
Speaker 1: it's played a big part in getting some pretty influential
Speaker 1: companies started, like door Dash, Airbnb, instat cart, and Yes
Speaker 1: Twitch in the form of justin TV now, Justin TV
Speaker 1: was a totally different beast from Keiko Software. Con and
Speaker 1: a small team of developers wanted to create a tool
Speaker 1: that would allow them to stream live video over the
Speaker 1: Internet and create something like a reality television stream Big
Speaker 1: Brother style. Originally with a camera that was strapped to
Speaker 1: a baseball cap that Con would wear, so you would
Speaker 1: get sort of a first person perspective, slightly taller than
Speaker 1: than Con himself. Perhaps it was a bit self centered,
Speaker 1: but the idea of life streaming was just starting to
Speaker 1: take off, you know, the idea of actually video streaming
Speaker 1: your life, and it was doing that because the technology
Speaker 1: you would need to do such a thing was coming
Speaker 1: into maturation. Webcams were becoming more affordable, and in the
Speaker 1: United States we were seeing some movement at least in
Speaker 1: large markets of broadband connectivity rolling out. And it took
Speaker 1: a couple of years to to build out the service,
Speaker 1: but Justin DV would launch in two thousand seven. That
Speaker 1: launch wasn't exactly a home run right away. People were
Speaker 1: intrigued by the idea of it, but the reality show
Speaker 1: broadcasting thing just wasn't winning over very many people. Con
Speaker 1: and his team were receiving a lot of messages saying
Speaker 1: that users would like to be able to use the
Speaker 1: service and stream their own content online, not just watch
Speaker 1: what they were being provided. So at the time Justin
Speaker 1: TV was you know, mostly about Justin and his friends.
Speaker 1: People were less interested in that, and it took a while,
Speaker 1: but eventually the company changed its focus from being a
Speaker 1: source of video streamed content to being a platform for
Speaker 1: video streaming content, allowing users to create accounts and channels
Speaker 1: and to stream their own stuff to whomever wanted to watch.
Speaker 1: One thing a lot of folks wanted to broadcast would
Speaker 1: be video game play sessions. Now this is not that
Speaker 1: surprising for people who aren't into video games. I get
Speaker 1: that this sounds strange, the idea of watching someone else
Speaker 1: play a game. I mean, after all, aren't games meant
Speaker 1: to be played? Why would you watch it? To that,
Speaker 1: I would say, not all of you play football or
Speaker 1: baseball or soccer, but a lot of you watch it,
Speaker 1: and it's the same sort of thing. It's this idea
Speaker 1: of you find enjoyment in watching people who are really
Speaker 1: good at performing that particular sport and enjoying the the
Speaker 1: feeling you get when you see them do well or
Speaker 1: see a team you support beat out another team. So
Speaker 1: this is really not that surprising to me. And I'm
Speaker 1: also you gotta keep in mind I say this a
Speaker 1: lot because Lauren's not on the show anymore. To say
Speaker 1: it for me, I'm old, So I remember the classic
Speaker 1: days of the video game arcade, where you would wander
Speaker 1: among cabinets for games like you know, Elevator Action or
Speaker 1: Spy Hunter. And while you would spend time playing games,
Speaker 1: you would also spend a lot of time watching other
Speaker 1: people playing, either because you were waiting for your own
Speaker 1: turn at that particular game, or the person was just
Speaker 1: really dang good at playing that game and you were
Speaker 1: just watching because you were impressed. I remember one afternoon
Speaker 1: at a Goldmine arcade where I stood for nearly twenty
Speaker 1: minutes watching a kid play through all of Dragons Lair,
Speaker 1: which was a LaserDisc based game that featured full hand
Speaker 1: drawn animation in it. So while games were really made
Speaker 1: for playing, lots of folks just really enjoyed watching them.
Speaker 1: But streaming video games presented other challenges. Twitch was set
Speaker 1: up to stream from a camera source like a webcam,
Speaker 1: streaming from another video source like a video game, let
Speaker 1: alone allowing for arrangements like a webcam picture overlaid on
Speaker 1: part of that video source just wasn't supported Natively, Folks
Speaker 1: were jerry rigging systems to kind of make it happen.
Speaker 1: The team Adjuin TV considered it emergent behavior, and so
Speaker 1: Con and his team hired on specialists who could help
Speaker 1: video game streamers set up their systems to allow for
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. To stream content from a video
Speaker 1: game onto the service, users needed to rely on third
Speaker 1: party software in those early days, and for the most
Speaker 1: part today they still do. Several different developers had options available,
Speaker 1: and one early one that remains popular to this day
Speaker 1: is open Broadcasting Software or oh b s. These programs
Speaker 1: typically operate as a full mixing and broadcasting service and
Speaker 1: allows users to set up stuff like the audio levels
Speaker 1: for their video stream incorporate the microphone and thus you
Speaker 1: can set the audio levels for your mike in comparison
Speaker 1: to the video game. Obviously want your mike to be
Speaker 1: slightly louder than the video games so people can hear
Speaker 1: you over the sounds of the game. UH support for
Speaker 1: things like webcams and transitions and video effects and more.
Speaker 1: And for years this was really the only way streamers
Speaker 1: could work with streaming services, and it wasn't always a
Speaker 1: user friendly or intuitive experience. Getting started could be a
Speaker 1: little bit intimidating as there were lots of settings to manage,
Speaker 1: but the determined gamers who wanted to stream found ways
Speaker 1: to make it work. As the various types of broadcasting
Speaker 1: software evolved and improved and added features. Over time, between
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, when justin TV launched and two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: when it would spin off Twitch dot tv, video game
Speaker 1: streaming really began to come into its own. There was
Speaker 1: a particular focus on sports, that is, on games that
Speaker 1: had an elite level of competitors who could play against
Speaker 1: each other informal organized tournaments, often with significant cash prizes
Speaker 1: for the winners. Players could make their own Twitch channels,
Speaker 1: and people could watch as these players would practice their
Speaker 1: strats and their skills, honing their techniques while training for
Speaker 1: the next tournament. And maybe that sounds weird to those
Speaker 1: of you who don't game, but it really is a
Speaker 1: show of how play at that level is truly incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean, these these players can see faster than I can.
Speaker 1: They will see details and and act on them faster
Speaker 1: than I can even register what is happening. It's phenomenal
Speaker 1: to me. Emmett Sheer, who served as the chief Technology
Speaker 1: officer of Justin TV, saw that this trend was going
Speaker 1: and he worked really hard to add more support for
Speaker 1: video game streaming. Sheer himself had been a competitive StarCraft
Speaker 1: two player and he really recognized what was going on.
Speaker 1: So as the team to a more features to help
Speaker 1: gamers back on justin TV, it became clear that what
Speaker 1: was really needed was a separate streaming platform. Gaming was
Speaker 1: starting to dominate the streams over at justin TV. It
Speaker 1: was actually hard to find the other stuff there, So
Speaker 1: the team decided that the right thing to do would
Speaker 1: be to spin off a separate streaming service specifically intended
Speaker 1: to support video games streaming from the get go, and
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, that's how Twitch dot tv was born.
Speaker 1: It was done to allow some of the stuff on
Speaker 1: justin TV a little more breathing room, because it was
Speaker 1: just getting avalanched by all this video game content. In
Speaker 1: July two eleven, one month after the service had launched,
Speaker 1: Twitch was ready to announce the launch of its Partner program.
Speaker 1: The partner program represented a professional level of streamer, someone
Speaker 1: who could actually make money off of streaming their video gameplay,
Speaker 1: whereas most people couldn't really do that dire rectally through
Speaker 1: Twitch at that time. If you were a streamer and
Speaker 1: you wanted to make money, you had few options available
Speaker 1: to you in those days, as the Partner program had
Speaker 1: some really high requirements in those early days. Keeping in
Speaker 1: mind this is when the service was less than a
Speaker 1: year old, so to qualify, a Twitch streamer had to
Speaker 1: have either five hundred minimum concurrent viewers on average, three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand channel views and at least one thousand followers,
Speaker 1: or you can meet one of three other tougher requirements.
Speaker 1: You could have an average of at least one thousand
Speaker 1: viewers at any given time, you could have a minimum
Speaker 1: of eight hundred thousand channel views or at least four
Speaker 1: thousand followers. Now, over time, what was required to be
Speaker 1: considered for you to make the status a partner would
Speaker 1: change and at times became less obvious to the average person.
Speaker 1: Twitch partners could earn a share of revenue that was
Speaker 1: generated on their streams, So to which is revenue model
Speaker 1: was largely on advertising. It was video ads that would
Speaker 1: run his pre role in channels or sometimes an overlay
Speaker 1: AD or sometimes even a mid role AD, and that
Speaker 1: was typically how Twitch was making its money. As a
Speaker 1: revenue generation kind of strategy, Twitch dot tv would handle
Speaker 1: all the ad sales arrangements and partners would get a
Speaker 1: percentage of all the revenue generated on their channel on
Speaker 1: a monthly basis, so once a month you would get
Speaker 1: paid out. The more folks who are watching ads on
Speaker 1: your stream, the more money you would make that month.
Speaker 1: Partners would also get access to new Twitch tools and
Speaker 1: features before the rest of Twitch users would. So if
Speaker 1: you were streaming on Twitch you were not a partner,
Speaker 1: then you might see partner streamers using tools that were
Speaker 1: not available to you, and it sometimes can seem a
Speaker 1: little unfair. At the same time, the people who are
Speaker 1: making partner they were kind of acting almost as power
Speaker 1: beta testers for these different Twitch tools and finding ways
Speaker 1: of making them really useful, and then those tools might
Speaker 1: later be rolled out to a larger group of users.
Speaker 1: Not at some point, though I couldn't find exactly when.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find a definitive source that that really laid
Speaker 1: this out. Twitch partners also got the ability to offer
Speaker 1: subscriptions to followers. Now on Twitch you can follow an
Speaker 1: account for free. You can sort of, you know, hit
Speaker 1: a little follow thing, and that makes it easier for
Speaker 1: you to see when your favorite streamers are active. Whenever
Speaker 1: you log into Twitch, you would see it, maybe on
Speaker 1: the landing page, so it made it much simpler. Subscriptions
Speaker 1: are a way for users to actually support the streamers
Speaker 1: they like to watch financially. So when they do that,
Speaker 1: subscribers get access to a few bells and whistles, which
Speaker 1: mostly play out in the chat room for those subscribe channels,
Speaker 1: So as subscriber might have a particular badge next to
Speaker 1: their user handle to designate that they are at a
Speaker 1: certain level of subscription for that particular streamer, or they
Speaker 1: might have access to a collection of special emote commands
Speaker 1: that the average person doesn't have. The original subscription fee
Speaker 1: in the United States was four dollars ninety nine cents
Speaker 1: per month. Twitch took about half of that technically just
Speaker 1: less than half, like two dollars forty nine cents, and
Speaker 1: the streamer would get the other two dollars and fifty
Speaker 1: cents of each of those subscriptions per month, and eventually
Speaker 1: Twitch would increase the options to also uh to other
Speaker 1: levels of subscription, so you still had the four dollars
Speaker 1: nine cents per month as the base level, but users
Speaker 1: could opt to subscribe at nine dollars nine cents a
Speaker 1: month or twenty four dollars and ninety nine cents per month.
Speaker 1: At those higher levels, users would get access to additional
Speaker 1: emotes and bells and whistles, so it's not like it
Speaker 1: was an enormous change in their experience, but they would
Speaker 1: have the knowledge that they were giving more support to
Speaker 1: those particular streamers. In addition, partners would get access to
Speaker 1: more emote slots as they racked up more subscribers, so
Speaker 1: it incentivized partners to try and get that number up,
Speaker 1: not just for the money, but to create more reasons
Speaker 1: to convince people to join and become subscribers. It was
Speaker 1: a sort of a feedback loop. But again this was
Speaker 1: all originally restricted to official Twitch partners, which represented a
Speaker 1: tiny percentage of the overall streamers on the platform. So
Speaker 1: if you wanted to make money off your streaming but
Speaker 1: you did not meet twitches requirements, your only other options
Speaker 1: were to find ways to benefit indirectly from your streaming,
Speaker 1: such as by offering merchandise or setting up an affiliate
Speaker 1: program through an online in store. So you would provide
Speaker 1: a special link to your viewers and you'd say, if
Speaker 1: you want to buy this chair that I have, you know,
Speaker 1: the same kind of chair, then follow this link and
Speaker 1: you can buy it there, and then the streamer gets
Speaker 1: a certain amount of money from every purchase that's made
Speaker 1: through that specific link. It's a little kick back to
Speaker 1: the streamer, and all of this is on the up
Speaker 1: and top. I mean, this is always where it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be. You're supposed to communicate that to the viewers,
Speaker 1: saying if you use this, then you help support the channel.
Speaker 1: I get a little bit every time you guys get it,
Speaker 1: and then you get the thing that you wanted in
Speaker 1: the first place and no extra cost to you. You
Speaker 1: can also try and get sponsorships from various companies. There
Speaker 1: are a couple of other ways that you could monetize
Speaker 1: your your streaming even if you weren't a partner, but
Speaker 1: it always requires a lot of hustle. The Twitch management
Speaker 1: team held a couple of different rounds of investment funding,
Speaker 1: one in two thousand twelve and an other in two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, and together those two rounds brought in about
Speaker 1: thirty five million dollars of investment. And this is one
Speaker 1: of those instances where if you could travel through time,
Speaker 1: you might join those investors. That there's what we call foreshadowing.
Speaker 1: Interesting side note. While Twitch dot tv would go on
Speaker 1: to become monumentally successful and profitable, Justin TV didn't fare
Speaker 1: quite as well. In February two fourteen, the parent company
Speaker 1: that was Justin TV that oversaw both the Justin TV
Speaker 1: service and Twitch TV rebranded as Twitch. So the spinoff
Speaker 1: has now become the master. And in August that year,
Speaker 1: Justin TV shut down entirely. It had become clear the
Speaker 1: video game streaming was the winner here and the more
Speaker 1: generic life streaming service was just not taking off at
Speaker 1: a level where it merited the amount of attention that
Speaker 1: was required to run it. So they cut their losses,
Speaker 1: they shut it down, and they really focused on Twitch.
Speaker 1: Also back in February two fourteen was the birth of
Speaker 1: a great social experiment called Twitch plays Pokemon. So Pokemon,
Speaker 1: in case you're not familiar, is a game series where
Speaker 1: you play as a Pokemon trainer and Pokemon is short
Speaker 1: for pocket monsters, So you go around collecting and training
Speaker 1: monsters to do battle on your behalf against other monsters. Anyway,
Speaker 1: not not important. This Twitch channel create an experiment which
Speaker 1: viewers could influence what happened in a specific Pokemon game
Speaker 1: called Pokemon Read. A bot was playing the game, and
Speaker 1: the viewers could type in commands and the video streams
Speaker 1: chat to make the bot do stuff, and because the
Speaker 1: game is turn based, the bot would wait for the
Speaker 1: next input and then act on it. As you might imagine,
Speaker 1: this quickly resulted in true chaos. As people discovered the channel,
Speaker 1: users would flood the chat with commands in an attempt
Speaker 1: to to be the one to guide the Pokemon playing
Speaker 1: bought to do a specific action, or sometimes just to
Speaker 1: cause trouble. So within a month the experiment had grown
Speaker 1: large enough that the channel's administrators changed things up a
Speaker 1: little bit. They switched from a yell commands at the
Speaker 1: bot mode to vote for anarchy or democracy. Anarchy was
Speaker 1: the old style of play in which a bot would
Speaker 1: take all the commands in the order that they were
Speaker 1: received and then execute on them in turn, and that
Speaker 1: resulted in a lot of chaos, and sometimes it meant
Speaker 1: you would spend hours watching the bot navigate the same
Speaker 1: menu due to all the different inputs it had received.
Speaker 1: Democracy took a different approach. The bot would pause between
Speaker 1: actions and players could vote on what happened next, and
Speaker 1: they would have about twenty seconds to cast their vote.
Speaker 1: Then the bot would look at all the votes and
Speaker 1: whichever one one it would perform that action. Now I
Speaker 1: could do a whole episode about the Twitch plays Pokemon experiment.
Speaker 1: The interesting stuff really doesn't have that much to do
Speaker 1: with the game or its mechanics. Instead had a lot
Speaker 1: to do with how people find ways to game systems
Speaker 1: and an effort to achieve specific goals. If you look
Speaker 1: at the experiment as a whole, you start to see
Speaker 1: stuff that might remind you of novels like Lord of
Speaker 1: the Flies or Animal Farm. But maybe that's best say
Speaker 1: for a different type of podcast, since the technical stuff
Speaker 1: was really just an enabler. Anyway, Twitch plays Pokemon really
Speaker 1: got the streaming service a lot of attention, and who
Speaker 1: boy did that pay off. Twitches performance was gaining attention,
Speaker 1: and it would soon lead to a couple of big
Speaker 1: fish in the tech world to explore acquisition opportunities. I'll
Speaker 1: explain more after we take this quick break. So rumors
Speaker 1: were running wild at Google in the form of YouTube
Speaker 1: was sniffing around Twitch for a possible acquisition. YouTube was
Speaker 1: already the de facto go to for online prerecorded video.
Speaker 1: The site was aiming to create the same space for
Speaker 1: live streaming video, and while the company was rolling out
Speaker 1: some live streaming capabilities, the user base was already over
Speaker 1: at Twitch. Meanwhile, Twitch was actually eliminating one major feature
Speaker 1: that upsets some of its users. In early August, the
Speaker 1: company began to delete archived broadcast recordings that were more
Speaker 1: than two weeks old. Partners got a little bit more
Speaker 1: breathing room. They could hold onto their broadcast recordings for
Speaker 1: two months. Oh and I didn't really cover this, but
Speaker 1: in the company introduced a paid subscription tier for users
Speaker 1: called Turbo. This wasn't a subscription to a specific streamer,
Speaker 1: but to Twitch itself, So for nine dollars a month,
Speaker 1: users could log into their paid subscription version of Twitch,
Speaker 1: where they would be able to skip all pre roll
Speaker 1: and overlay ads. They also got access to more chat features,
Speaker 1: which is really that's the only features that viewers get
Speaker 1: access to on Twitch if you're not actually streaming stuff anyway.
Speaker 1: Turbo subscribers could also have their broadcast recording stick around
Speaker 1: for two months. Hit Box TV, a competitor to Twitch
Speaker 1: that launched in attempted to use twitches announcement about clearing
Speaker 1: out the archives is kind of a leverage of weapon,
Speaker 1: saying that Twitch was out of touch with its user base,
Speaker 1: but Twitch already had the momentum and was really just
Speaker 1: getting started. Ultimately, YouTube would not be the company to
Speaker 1: scoop up Twitch. Instead, Amazon came in with a nearly
Speaker 1: billion dollar offer of its own, and they bought the company.
Speaker 1: Twitch would become an Amazon owned business. Kevin Lynn, who
Speaker 1: was a co founder of Twitch and the chief operating officer,
Speaker 1: later described the experience as frightening at east at first.
Speaker 1: As someone who has been working in the same job
Speaker 1: since two thousand seven but has gone through five different
Speaker 1: changes in corporate ownership, I rock that by the end
Speaker 1: of two thousand fourteen, Twitch had made an acquisition of
Speaker 1: its own. The company purchased Good Game Agency, not to
Speaker 1: be confused with Good Game Studios. That's the company out
Speaker 1: of Hamburg, Germany. Good Game Agency grew out of Philadelphia
Speaker 1: when CEO and founder Alex Garfield got interested in East
Speaker 1: sports and competitive gaming and gradually became more involved in
Speaker 1: the scene, ultimately stepping in to help a professional team
Speaker 1: called Evil Geniuses after the team had been essentially swindled
Speaker 1: by a crooked manager. The agency would become a big
Speaker 1: player in East Sports, ultimately acting as the owners of
Speaker 1: not just Evil Geniuses but another team called Alliance, as
Speaker 1: well as holding its own tournaments. Garfield wrote a long
Speaker 1: and fantastic blog is describing his decision to align with Twitch.
Speaker 1: That really drove home his love for competitive gaming and
Speaker 1: the belief that this would be a great relationship, a
Speaker 1: belief that ultimately probably didn't hold true. Two years later,
Speaker 1: Garfield would leave Twitch and Good Gain. In August two
Speaker 1: thousand and sixteen, he announced that the company and the
Speaker 1: E sports teams had changed his life, but it was
Speaker 1: time for him to move on. Not long after, Twitch
Speaker 1: would shut down Good Game Agency. Good Game employees were
Speaker 1: now direct Twitch employees. Twitch later would hand over the
Speaker 1: management for both Evil Geniuses and the Alliance professional teams
Speaker 1: to the players on those teams and divested the company
Speaker 1: of team ownership. Today, Garfield is the head of a
Speaker 1: company called pop Dog and e sports streaming service that
Speaker 1: seems to me to be a bit of a rebuttal
Speaker 1: of the way streaming is handled on services like Twitch
Speaker 1: and YouTube, and he's also remained vocal critic of how
Speaker 1: the new owners of Evil Geniuses have handled that brand.
Speaker 1: But let's move back to Twitch. In two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: Twitch did something really useful for streamers, and I'm really
Speaker 1: being totally serious about this. The company created a royalty
Speaker 1: free music library that streamers could use the tracks in
Speaker 1: that library were cleared for streaming. So if you want
Speaker 1: to play music on your stream, let let's say you've
Speaker 1: got a startup screen. You haven't actually started playing yet.
Speaker 1: You wanted to run your stream for a little bit,
Speaker 1: get some viewers, and then jump in. You can have
Speaker 1: some music playing in the background. Or maybe you wanted
Speaker 1: music underlying whatever it was you were actually doing on
Speaker 1: the stream. You could do it with this library and
Speaker 1: not worry about getting a copyright strike against you. And
Speaker 1: this is a big deal. Music licensing is hard y'all.
Speaker 1: As a peek behind the curtain, I work for I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, which is in the business of broadcasting content
Speaker 1: like music. I mean, they have hundreds of radio stations.
Speaker 1: But even in podcasting, and podcasting is different than broadcast
Speaker 1: because in a podcast, you can go back to a
Speaker 1: specific episode whenever you like. It's like having a copy
Speaker 1: of that content. So the licensing requirements for podcasting are
Speaker 1: a bit wonky. It's not like live radio where you
Speaker 1: hear it and then it's gone. Having access to a
Speaker 1: tool like Royalty Free Music is pun intended a game changer.
Speaker 1: The service began to experiment a bit with streaming stuff
Speaker 1: outside the world of video games, In February two fifteen,
Speaker 1: Twitch began streaming poker games. I'm sure folks who have
Speaker 1: been familiar with the path of ESPN we're worried about that,
Speaker 1: But the rest of us were worried the following month
Speaker 1: when reports broke that hackers had managed to breach twitches
Speaker 1: security and get access to user information. The initial investigations
Speaker 1: seemed to indicate that user names and encrypted passwords were lead,
Speaker 1: but that the financial information that users had with the
Speaker 1: site had remained safe. As a result, all users were
Speaker 1: required to change their passwords, while the leaked passwords were
Speaker 1: still protected by encryption. Encryption can be broken if you
Speaker 1: have enough time and enough processing power. Users were also
Speaker 1: made aware that the hack had leaked some personal information,
Speaker 1: such as the users names and birth dates and addresses
Speaker 1: not great. In the summer of one year, after YouTube
Speaker 1: had been eyeing Twitch for a possible acquisition, we saw
Speaker 1: the launch of YouTube Gaming, later just known as YouTube Live.
Speaker 1: This was launched as a direct competitor to Twitch. Streamers
Speaker 1: had options when it came to services, but Twitch had
Speaker 1: a huge head start of several years and had gathered
Speaker 1: a lot of the live streaming audience. YouTube Gaming despite
Speaker 1: having the incredible power of YouTube behind It didn't have
Speaker 1: as strong an association with live streaming as Twitch had,
Speaker 1: so for some creators it just made more sense to
Speaker 1: move over to YouTube from Twitch because there wasn't really
Speaker 1: any risk there. They didn't have a huge following or anything.
Speaker 1: But for others, sticking with the established service made the
Speaker 1: most sense, particularly partners who had a lucrative arrangement with Twitch.
Speaker 1: YouTube does offer some things that Twitch doesn't, such as
Speaker 1: archiving past streams indefinitely. While Twitch was clearing house after
Speaker 1: fourteen days or two months, for partners, those recorded streams
Speaker 1: stay with YouTube forever. Like Twitch, YouTube offers the ability
Speaker 1: for viewers to support streamers by joining the channel. Here's
Speaker 1: here's a complicated thing. See YouTube already uses the word
Speaker 1: subscribe to mean follow, so you can follow a specific
Speaker 1: creator by subscribing for free, and that makes the terminology confusing,
Speaker 1: because at Twitch, you follow a creator for free, you
Speaker 1: pay to subscribe to a streamer. On YouTube, you subscribe
Speaker 1: to a streamer for free, but you pay to join
Speaker 1: a channel's membership. So it's the same stuff on either service.
Speaker 1: It's just the terminology is overlapping and different. One thing
Speaker 1: that Twitch had going for its favor was its relationship
Speaker 1: with Amazon. Amazon Prime members can subscribe to one channel
Speaker 1: on Twitch as part of their Prime membership. There's no
Speaker 1: extra cost to the Prime membership holder, but it helps
Speaker 1: support the Twitch creator. In October two thousand fifteen, Twitch
Speaker 1: began to expand its scope and opened up a new
Speaker 1: category of live streams called Creative. These dreams were meant
Speaker 1: to showcase creative hobbies and endeavors, and Twitch launched the
Speaker 1: channels with a marathon of Bob Ross painting videos So
Speaker 1: many Happy Little Trees. A year later, the Side did
Speaker 1: something similar would introduced a food category of streaming services,
Speaker 1: broadcasting a marathon of cooking shows hosted by Julia Child.
Speaker 1: By the end of we started to see the sort
Speaker 1: of jockeying for talent has been a big part of
Speaker 1: recent news. A service called Major League Gaming made an
Speaker 1: offer to a professional Twitch streamer who goes by the
Speaker 1: handle aid Shot, and the deal would mean maid Shot
Speaker 1: would agree to stream exclusively on the Major League Gaming service,
Speaker 1: leaving Twitch behind, but streamers Liken aid Shot would learn
Speaker 1: a pretty tough lesson, which is that you could get
Speaker 1: a big initial payout, but unless your audience makes the
Speaker 1: move with you, You're not guaranteed much longevity in your
Speaker 1: success on the new platform. This is a lesson that
Speaker 1: a lot of people would learn the hard way over
Speaker 1: the following years, and on the flip side, it was
Speaker 1: also a lesson for the various streaming services. Sometimes dropping
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of money on an exclusivity deal doesn't
Speaker 1: result in a big boost in users in the long term.
Speaker 1: Nate Shot, as it turns out, would return to Twitch
Speaker 1: in two thousand sixteen. Meanwhile, another big player was getting
Speaker 1: ready to enter the space. Microsoft, as the powerhouse behind
Speaker 1: the Windows operating system and the Xbox series of video
Speaker 1: game consoles, wanted a piece of the action. The company
Speaker 1: began to look around for a potential acquisition to build
Speaker 1: out its capabilities, and their sites fell on a service
Speaker 1: called Beam. Beam had started in Seattle, and it introduced
Speaker 1: a new factor into streaming, that of interactivity. While Twitches
Speaker 1: interactivity was mostly limited to chat between viewers and streamers,
Speaker 1: apart from some notable exceptions like the viewer controlled bot
Speaker 1: in Twitch plays Pokemon, Beam included tools that would let
Speaker 1: viewers actually affect the streamers gameplay experience. According to a
Speaker 1: press release from August Quote. With Beam, you don't just
Speaker 1: watch your favorite streamer play, you play along with them.
Speaker 1: You can give them new challenges and make real time
Speaker 1: choices that affect their gameplay, from tools selection, two quests
Speaker 1: to movement, all through simple visual controls end quote. Initially,
Speaker 1: the focus was really on incorporating Beam into the Xbox experience,
Speaker 1: which didn't have as much of an overlap with Twitch.
Speaker 1: While it was entirely possible to stream console games to Twitch,
Speaker 1: the majority of streams tended to be from PC based games,
Speaker 1: so there was a time when these services didn't have
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of overlap. But in Microsoft rebranded the
Speaker 1: Beam service, Beam became Mixer. According to Microsoft, the reason
Speaker 1: for this name change was one of necessity. There are
Speaker 1: regions in the world where the name Beam was already
Speaker 1: in use for a different service, and so Microsoft needed
Speaker 1: a name that it could use in different regions, preferably
Speaker 1: a name that could still be used all around the world,
Speaker 1: rather than, you know, have a name that's different for
Speaker 1: every single territory. The service also included some new features
Speaker 1: and prepared itself to make some big moves against Twitch.
Speaker 1: And so we're getting to a point where some of
Speaker 1: the drama that's happened more recently has begun to unfold.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more when we come back, but first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break in Twitch expanded, who could monetize
Speaker 1: live streaming by launching the Twitch Affiliate program. Not to
Speaker 1: be confused by the store affiliate monetization strategy that I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, where you would get, you know, a special
Speaker 1: link people could follow, and then you would get you know,
Speaker 1: a little kickback every time people use that link. Instead,
Speaker 1: the Twitch Affiliate program was a sort of step between
Speaker 1: Twitch partner and casual Twitch user. Twitch would choose channels
Speaker 1: to invite into the program. You couldn't apply for it,
Speaker 1: They would choose you, and to qualify, your channel needed
Speaker 1: to have at least five hundred total minutes broadcast in
Speaker 1: the last thirty days, at least seven unique broadcast days
Speaker 1: in the last thirty days, an average of three concurrent
Speaker 1: viewers or more over the last thirty days, and at
Speaker 1: least fifty followers. Not first, the primary way affiliate members
Speaker 1: could make money off of streaming was through a system
Speaker 1: called bits, which are essentially a form of in app
Speaker 1: currency that you use to tip streamers. You buy this
Speaker 1: virtual currency with real money. Then you use the virtual
Speaker 1: bits to cheer on your favorite streamers, you can tip them.
Speaker 1: It keeps track of the biggest tippers during a stream.
Speaker 1: And yes, I do think this is largely in an
Speaker 1: effort to obvious skate how much money is going to
Speaker 1: each person and to Twitch allah Disney Bucks. But that's
Speaker 1: neither here nor there. By January nineteen, Twitch was boasting
Speaker 1: more than three million streamers monthly, with live stream tournaments
Speaker 1: bringing in as many as one hundred million viewers, eclipsing
Speaker 1: most quote unquote real sporting events. It was hitting a
Speaker 1: monthly average of nearly one billion hours of total watch
Speaker 1: time on the site. It had a solid place in
Speaker 1: the top ten sites that served as a source for
Speaker 1: video content online, Amazon Prime being another in the top ten,
Speaker 1: so Amazon was actually holding two places in the top
Speaker 1: ten simultaneously. And along the way, Twitch had to deal
Speaker 1: with some of the stuff that comes along with the
Speaker 1: territory of providing a live streaming platform, mostly in the
Speaker 1: form of dealing with people who were violating terms of service.
Speaker 1: Some people were being too vulgar or explicit, although you've
Speaker 1: got to go pretty far to to to really trip
Speaker 1: twitches warning flags. Some were engaging in jackass like displays
Speaker 1: of self harm, which was right up against Twitch's terms
Speaker 1: of service. A few were caught out being frauds or cheats.
Speaker 1: There was a gambling scandal back in the day. There's
Speaker 1: been some scandals of of people who have cheated on games,
Speaker 1: like they were using a view bot as opposed to
Speaker 1: actually playing a game. UH. There's one case where a
Speaker 1: person was faking having a real life disability in order
Speaker 1: to drum up sympathy and support, and UH, in the
Speaker 1: middle of a game, got angry and accidentally revealed that
Speaker 1: that disability was in fact fake. There are numerous stories
Speaker 1: along these lines, and every time one would pop up,
Speaker 1: Twitch would have to crack down a little harder on
Speaker 1: the rules. And some of the bands that have been
Speaker 1: placed over people over the years have since been reversed.
Speaker 1: Some of them were just temporary to begin with, but
Speaker 1: a few do remain permanent. Making matters more complicated is
Speaker 1: that the rules are somewhat vaguely defined. For example, Twitch
Speaker 1: has a rule against streamers dressing suggestively or provocatively. You know,
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to be showing too much skin on camera,
Speaker 1: but there's no real standard that defines what this practically means,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you'll see one channel get banned for that
Speaker 1: sort of activity, while other channels that seem to be
Speaker 1: just as guilty keep on going. And this has been
Speaker 1: a continuing source of frustration for people who are in
Speaker 1: the streaming space, and at the same time, Twitch, like
Speaker 1: many companies online or off, is having to reckon with
Speaker 1: the massive problem of sexual harassment and misconduct. This is
Speaker 1: something that across the board has been a long time coming,
Speaker 1: as sexual harassment and all industries has been a huge problem.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's more prevalent in the world
Speaker 1: of gaming, but it can certainly be more overt. And
Speaker 1: the fact that gaming has traditionally catered primarily to straight
Speaker 1: males and many games have perpetuated a fairly skewed point
Speaker 1: of view when it comes to sexism that does not
Speaker 1: help things. In the summer of a number of streamers
Speaker 1: became the focus of allegations of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct.
Speaker 1: Twitch responded with a message that said it was looking
Speaker 1: into the accounts of those who had been involved in
Speaker 1: those allegations and was taking each and every one of
Speaker 1: those very seriously. In addition, some people allege that the
Speaker 1: company itself had taken a rather hands off approach to
Speaker 1: particularly popular streamers, most notably those who are under contract
Speaker 1: with Twitch, the implication being that if streamers are good
Speaker 1: for business, then they can be exempt from the rules.
Speaker 1: That is not a good look, and the story gets
Speaker 1: super ugly, and it's still unfolding as I record this episode.
Speaker 1: But one thing I can say is that some former
Speaker 1: vice presidents of Twitch have confirmed some of those stories,
Speaker 1: indicating that this is a deep problem with the company culture,
Speaker 1: and honestly, it makes me think a bit about Uber
Speaker 1: and how that company was really in a bad place
Speaker 1: for a long time. As for other cases that don't
Speaker 1: involve sexual harassment or misconduct, it's extremely difficult to stand
Speaker 1: out on a platform like Twitch, just as it is
Speaker 1: hard to stand out in places like YouTube or heck,
Speaker 1: in podcasts, the flood of content means you're competing against
Speaker 1: a lot of other folks for viewing time from your fans,
Speaker 1: and so people try lots of different things in order
Speaker 1: to get those viewers, or they have certain personalities that
Speaker 1: attract viewers, and then the streamers will dial that personality
Speaker 1: up to eleven, kind of like a professional wrestler would,
Speaker 1: And this means some streamers push the envelope a little
Speaker 1: harder than others. It becomes part of their persona and
Speaker 1: the attraction of their channels, But it also risks the
Speaker 1: great Twitch ban hammer, either on a temporary or a
Speaker 1: permanent basis. If you were to look at an exhaustive
Speaker 1: list of the various bands of high profile streamers, you're
Speaker 1: likely gonna get upset, not necessarily for the decision to
Speaker 1: ban some folks. Often those decisions are extremely well warranted,
Speaker 1: but you might get upset because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of times where Twitch hasn't banned someone for behaving really awfully,
Speaker 1: so that there's a real inconsistency with banning, and that
Speaker 1: is a big problem. And making that worse is that
Speaker 1: there are times when Twitch will ban someone and then
Speaker 1: the reason for the ban is never disclosed. Now, it's
Speaker 1: possible that at least in some of those cases, Twitch
Speaker 1: has reached out to streamers and explain the reason for
Speaker 1: the band, and then the streamers subsequently decide not to
Speaker 1: share that with their public. But you hear this often
Speaker 1: enough to get the feeling that at least sometimes accounts
Speaker 1: get and for a blanket quote unquote violation of policies
Speaker 1: kind of statement. Perhaps the most famous recent example of
Speaker 1: this is with the popular streamer Doctor Disrespect, a guy beam.
Speaker 1: Disrespect had been banned before, most notably when he and
Speaker 1: his cameraman ducked into a restroom at E three during
Speaker 1: a live stream, but that ban was made temporary. Disrespect
Speaker 1: had signed an exclusive multi year contract with Twitch early
Speaker 1: in but in June of this year, his account was
Speaker 1: suddenly removed. There was a live stream in June where
Speaker 1: Disrespect was live on camera. He got a message on
Speaker 1: his phone, he looked at it, and then he rapidly
Speaker 1: had a massive change of attitude and he ended the
Speaker 1: stream shortly afterward. And that fueled a lot of speculation
Speaker 1: as to what was possibly going on, like did he
Speaker 1: did he get shut down live on camera? He violated
Speaker 1: his exclusivity agreement? Was he involved in a case of
Speaker 1: sexual harassment or misconduct? Or was it something else? Disrespect
Speaker 1: wasn't really talking and neither was Twitch. And as I
Speaker 1: record this, the reason for Disrespects ban remains a mystery
Speaker 1: outside of Twitch, and the Doctor himself claims he doesn't
Speaker 1: know why he was removed from the platform. He has
Speaker 1: since moved over to streaming on YouTube. To this day,
Speaker 1: streamers on Twitch aren't supposed to play in games with
Speaker 1: disrespect on their team. Now they can't play against him
Speaker 1: if they're in a game and they're matched up against him,
Speaker 1: but they're also not supposed to have his audio on
Speaker 1: their streams. That's been something that has jumped up recently
Speaker 1: too and has been a bit of a controversy. Now.
Speaker 1: Twitch holding a dominant position in the market also meant
Speaker 1: it was the prime target for everyone else, and we
Speaker 1: started to see that really unfold in twenty nineteen. In
Speaker 1: August twenty nineteen, professional streamer Tyler Blevins, whose best known
Speaker 1: by his online handle Ninja, signed an exclusive streaming deal
Speaker 1: with Microsoft's Mixer service. It's kind of hard to explain
Speaker 1: to someone unfamiliar with the sports how big a deal
Speaker 1: this was. Ninja is a superstar. He's played many games,
Speaker 1: but he's perhaps best known for his Fortnite play. He's
Speaker 1: participated in numerous tournaments along the way, he's been a
Speaker 1: commentator on tournaments. Fortnite has been one of the most
Speaker 1: popular games on the Twitch streaming service. Since Fortnite introduced
Speaker 1: the Battle Royal mode, took a spot from a former
Speaker 1: Battle Royal darling called pub g and Ninja is a
Speaker 1: big enough deal that he has a professional management team
Speaker 1: to help him negotiate stuff like merchandising deals and sponsorships
Speaker 1: and exclusivity agreements, and so he and his team were
Speaker 1: able to secure a pretty sweet deal with Microsoft. In return,
Speaker 1: Ninja would stream exclusively on Mixer. Twitch meanwhile struggled to
Speaker 1: figure out what to do with Ninja's door channel. It
Speaker 1: had millions of followers. The company made the decision to
Speaker 1: direct the channel to promote other active channels in the
Speaker 1: Fortnite space, but that decision allowed someone else to game
Speaker 1: the system. Someone created a streaming channel that was streaming
Speaker 1: explicit sexual video content. This person inflated the number of
Speaker 1: viewers on that channel, and they tagged the channel as
Speaker 1: a Fortnight stream, and all the stuff was automated. So
Speaker 1: Twitch looks and sees that there's this Fortnite stream that
Speaker 1: has an enormous number of viewers, And because Ninja's dormant
Speaker 1: channel was automatically promoting Fortnite streams that were ranking really well,
Speaker 1: the Ninja channel began to display the feed from this
Speaker 1: this channel that was just showing explicit sexual content. Ninja
Speaker 1: was understandably upset. He had spent so much time building
Speaker 1: that brand. He wasn't allowed to go back and manage
Speaker 1: his channel because of his exclusivity agreement, and he felt
Speaker 1: that it was his name and reputation being drawn through
Speaker 1: the mud. Twitch management hastily banned the offending channel and apologized,
Speaker 1: and people began to wonder if maybe there need to
Speaker 1: be a better system to moderate channels on Twitch. Ninja's
Speaker 1: departure wasn't the only one. A couple of months after
Speaker 1: he left, another gamer known as Shroud followed suit and
Speaker 1: also signed an exclusive deal with Mixer. Shroud had more
Speaker 1: than seven million followers on Twitch when he did so.
Speaker 1: Clearly Microsoft was banking on having top streamers pull enough
Speaker 1: audience from Twitch in order to give Mixer a boost.
Speaker 1: And also, Shroud happens to have the same management company
Speaker 1: as Ninja. It's a company called Loaded, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: is just a coincidence. Other prominent streamers soon joined the ranks.
Speaker 1: King Gothalian and Ewalk were also too that made the
Speaker 1: move from Twitch to to Mixer, but it ended up
Speaker 1: not being a very long arrangement. While Ninja and Shroud
Speaker 1: signed exclusivity agreements for presumably a ton of cash, a
Speaker 1: princely sum at the very least, Microsoft decided to pull
Speaker 1: the plug on Mixer in the summer of the company
Speaker 1: announced in June that Mixer would shut down on July
Speaker 1: that existing partners would be moved over to Facebook Gaming. Now,
Speaker 1: this did not go over so well with a lot
Speaker 1: of folks on Mixer, and it led to some jibes
Speaker 1: from streamers on other platforms. For people like Shroud and Ninja,
Speaker 1: there were questions of what move would make the most
Speaker 1: financial sense. But for lots of other people who spent
Speaker 1: time and effort building a following on Mixer, it was
Speaker 1: a much more serious matter. They had spent years creating
Speaker 1: a following, and there was no guarantee they were going
Speaker 1: to be able to bring that audience with them, either
Speaker 1: to Facebook Gaming or some other platform. For the big superstars,
Speaker 1: this was sort of a bump in the road, But
Speaker 1: for a lot of streamers who depended upon Mixer as
Speaker 1: where they built their career, it was much more than that.
Speaker 1: The fact that Microsoft didn't reach out to streamers first,
Speaker 1: but rather published this decision on Twitter in a series
Speaker 1: of public tweets was salt in the wound, because that's
Speaker 1: how people were learning about it, was the fact that
Speaker 1: it was being published on Twitter. But this is an
Speaker 1: episode about Twitch, not Mixer. So I'll go back to Twitch.
Speaker 1: But one day I'll have to do a full story
Speaker 1: of the development of Beam all the way to the
Speaker 1: shuttering of Mixer, because that tale has more than its
Speaker 1: share of dark scandals and bad decisions. Rumors started popping
Speaker 1: up that perhaps Disrespect, Shroud, and Ninja would form their
Speaker 1: own streaming service, separate from all the established companies. Now
Speaker 1: ultimately that proved to be pure speculation, or at the
Speaker 1: very least, if it ever had been a plan. It
Speaker 1: didn't pan out that way. Ninja briefly switched over to
Speaker 1: YouTube Live before he signed another multi year exclusive agreement
Speaker 1: with Twitch, and so he has returned back home. Shroud
Speaker 1: has done the same, also signing a multi year agreement
Speaker 1: with exclusive streaming to Twitch. Dr Disrespect remains banned from
Speaker 1: the platform, so he is not doing that. As I
Speaker 1: wrap up these notes, I can give you a glimpse
Speaker 1: into some of the stats on Twitch. There are slightly
Speaker 1: more than three million viewers who are live on the
Speaker 1: service as I write this, watching more than nine thousand channels.
Speaker 1: The number of hours of content watched on twitch tv
Speaker 1: in August twenty twenty was one point six billion hours
Speaker 1: of content. Holy cow, that is equivalent to one thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred twenty seven years. That's the amount of time
Speaker 1: spent by people watching streams on Twitch in August. The
Speaker 1: all time peak and viewers at one time over the
Speaker 1: last week was just over six million people. Now, it's
Speaker 1: no big surprise, but the average number of viewers and
Speaker 1: hours of viewing has been on the rise since the
Speaker 1: outbreak of COVID nineteen. For those of you out there
Speaker 1: who want to set up a Twitch stream, it does
Speaker 1: require a few things. If you want to do it
Speaker 1: really well, you need a pretty beefy computer, not just
Speaker 1: to play games, but to push out the streamed content
Speaker 1: to the Internet. Some streamers prefer to actually use a
Speaker 1: two PC set up, one PC dedicated to gaming and
Speaker 1: the second one just dedicated to handling the encoding and
Speaker 1: streaming of content part. You probably want a decent webcam
Speaker 1: or better, you want a good microphone. You want to
Speaker 1: become familiar with whatever broadcasting software you want to use,
Speaker 1: like oh b S, so that you can, you know,
Speaker 1: have like a nice looking overlay and some transitions and
Speaker 1: stuff that complements your channel. You gotta have good lighting.
Speaker 1: You want your background to look nice. It's not the
Speaker 1: hardest stuff in the world to learn, but it does
Speaker 1: represent a very or two entry. On top of all that,
Speaker 1: even if you're a super good gamer and you set
Speaker 1: up your system well, you've got good screen presence, you
Speaker 1: still got to gather an audience. And like I said,
Speaker 1: getting noticed is hard. It's not impossible, but it is challenging,
Speaker 1: even for someone who might be well known in some
Speaker 1: other form of media. Me And it's also a good
Speaker 1: idea to take a really critical view of whatever platform
Speaker 1: you're thinking of using, whether it's Twitch or something else,
Speaker 1: because you don't want to hit your wagon to a
Speaker 1: service that behaves in a way that you find objectionable.
Speaker 1: You don't want to work for a boss that does
Speaker 1: stuff that you find upsetting. You want to try and
Speaker 1: find a platform that fits your philosophy. If you're not
Speaker 1: bothered by stuff that one platform is doing, and you
Speaker 1: don't think it's necessarily wrong or anything, there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with joining that service, but do take a critical look
Speaker 1: before you start making decisions. I'm sure that I'll do
Speaker 1: a lot more up pisodes related to Twitch. While back,
Speaker 1: I even used to stream podcasting as I would record episodes.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll do that again in future episodes. Since I'm
Speaker 1: doing this from home, I could set up a Twitch
Speaker 1: stream and actually stream my recording sessions. You guys could
Speaker 1: hear how many times I have to take pauses or
Speaker 1: how many times I make mistakes. It's a lot. You
Speaker 1: don't get to hear it in the final episodes because
Speaker 1: Tari is so awesome, but it's a lot. I would
Speaker 1: need to install some software in order to make that happen.
Speaker 1: I haven't done that for this episode. So of this
Speaker 1: episode about streaming did not stream live, but maybe next time.
Speaker 1: I'll keep you guys posted in the meantime. If you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, reach out to me. You can do so
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: hs W, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: H