Very wise advice re: constantly remaining agile both in hard technical skills as well as having the vision to expand your value-added proposition to clients. Curious to know how the transformation of your business will impact the courseware you offer.
The changes to our business won't impact our courses because the courses are a part of our diversified business offerings. The goal is to not have all our eggs in one basket.
Fantastic insights! Wow... That's scary news indeed. AI seems to be affecting all realms of creative services. Personally, I'm really trying to level up my own skills. And I'm also looking into several other areas (that are related).
AI is definitely being felt throughout the creative services industry. Everyone from marketing, to writers, editors, and even voice over actors. It's not a thing we can turn a blind eye to if we want to continue offering creative services. Tara and I are trying to look at the areas that AI struggles with and find ways we fill those gaps. Do you mind sharing some of the areas you're looking into?
Yeah I pivoted into video editing a couple of years ago, around when Descript was released, but I went beyond Descript and it's relatively limited video capabilities almost immediately. So there's work to do, enough to fill all 30 days of the month, for now at least. The pricing and time management is a bigger issue. But I do worry about even video production running out of steam down the road.
Video production as we know it won't really run out of steam, but it will change and become less lucrative. It's funny because we were talking about this with my sister who works in the video production world. Her experience is in the space of tv and documentary production, as well as corporate video and she was talking about how video editors are struggling to find jobs this year. From what I've seen, AI starts at the bottom of an industry. Those with little to no budgets will use AI to do it themselves, reducing the number of clients at the bottom. Once AI becomes established in an industry, it starts pulling prices down at the top of the industry as the perceived value decreases. This starts to compress the industry in terms of the higher cost providers having to lower their rates and the low cost providers are still there taking the bottom of the industry. Now, we're looking at a commoditized service. We're just entering this phase in audio podcast editing. The same thing will likely occur with video podcast editing. We need to remember that podcast editing, audio or video, only requires basic skills to do the editing. AI has made it so podcasters don't need to know how to clean up or mix audio. AI can handle the animated titles on their shorts. Content creators are heavily leaning on AI to find and create the clips for them. The less skill that is involved, the easier it will be for AI to disrupt and devalue that service. So, the question becomes, how can we take our existing skills and find new places or ways to apply them that aren't going to be hit by AI as quickly? This is the wave we should be looking for.
@@jesse.mccune Yeah I should have specified: I went beyond mere podcast video editing too and went into editing RU-vid videos of all kinds. Of course automation is a threat there too but yeah
@xyzmedia5161 That's a great example of not defining yourself by what you, but the value you provide. You aren't a podcast editor, you edit audio and video content for clients. This opens up opportunities you would otherwise be passing up if you were only a podcast editor.
Is it limiting to refer to your business as "podcast services" when what you do in the bigger sense, is knowledge capture and delivering client content in a consistent digital, listener friendly format? Seems to me that calling your business "podcast services" is about like me saying "I'm a songwriter in the key of Bb". ;^) About expanding on the podcast medium, I desired to capture my life lessons, short stories, memories, etc. to pass on to my kids, biological and ideological, as a kind of inheritance. I've been blogging for decades but that medium seems to be dying as no one reads anymore. So I converted my blog to a podcast format, which thankfully I had a leg up on as a lifelong recording songwriter. My own experience causes me to think there may be an untapped market for people to record audio for a purpose other than a podcast. Perhaps like an audio version of Storyworth (turn your life into a book of memories)? How about a personal podcast for relatives / heirs? How would such be facilitated - though I imagine it could be like herding cats to get elderly to record their 'memoirs' or whatever. Still it seems like there are any number of potential markets for capturing knowledge, experience, stories / memoirs. To focus on "podcasting" is to focus on the delivery system, instead of the larger market which is content capture and delivery. Anyway - just spitballing. ;^)
This is the exact sentiment behind the idea of jumping the curve. It's not limiting to refer to it as such, but to think of yourself as a podcast service provider. An audio podcast editor helps people tell their stories through audio. Many editors are looking for new ways to keep working with podcasters and this is what will keep them stuck. We can get better at what we do and start offering services to video producers who need audio people. We can start learning how to mix in Atmos so we are ready when AR becomes more accessible. We can look for new markets altogether like your example of archiving family member's stories and history in an audio or audio/video format. There are many different routes here and the only one that is likely to dead end is offering services only to podcasters, unless we are ok with large rosters and fast turnaround.
