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Jim the Podcast Sherpa on the Virtual Sessions presented by The DJ Sessions 7/1/25

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🎙️ The DJ Sessions: Virtual Sessions — Guest: Jim the Podcast Sherpa

In this insightful episode, Darran Bruce welcomes Jim, The Podcast Sherpa, for a deep dive into the world of podcasting, its evolution, and the realities behind producing a successful show.

 

Jim shares how losing his beloved iPod unexpectedly sparked his love for podcasts and led him to launch Podcast Picks, a show dedicated to highlighting other podcasters and their stories. The two discuss how podcasting exploded during the COVID-19 lockdowns and how the landscape shifted as everyone rushed to go live and build an audience.

 

Darran reflects on his early days in public access TV, broadcast pilots, the launch of the video iPod, and how his production company pivoted into podcasting and live streaming. He offers candid advice on what aspiring podcasters often get wrong—underestimating the need for research, planning, marketing, and consistency.

 

They explore the impact of social media algorithms, influencer fatigue, and the uncertain role AI might play in shaping future content. Jim and Darran also share fun moments, from obscure 80s music trivia to the quirks of niche podcast ideas like knitting shows.

 

Throughout, they drop valuable gems about building an audience, the hustle behind the scenes, and why authentic connections always win over hype.

 

Key Topics:

How losing an iPod sparked Podcast Picks

The podcast boom during COVID-19

Lessons from 20+ years in broadcasting and livestreaming

Social media trends and declining organic reach

The promise and pitfalls of AI in content creation

Tips for aspiring podcasters: research, consistency & marketing

Obscure 80s music trivia showdown

The future of authentic indie media


Jim the Podcast Sherpa on the Virtual Sessions presented by The DJ Sessions 7/1/25

About Jim –

What’s on YOUR podcast playlist? Welcome to The Sherpa Chalet, where I’ll help you find podcasts and grow your podcast playlist by interviewing podcasters, artists, and interesting people, recommending podcasts, and telling bad jokes! 

I’m your Podcast Sherpa! Connect with me at jimthepodcastsherpa@gmail.com or follow the show @sherpalution on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and Tik-Tok! Listen, subscribe, review, spread the word, and make this your 6th favorite podcast! (Keeping the pressure off here…) #VivaLaSherplution!

About The DJ Sessions –

“The DJ Sessions” is a Twitch/Mixcloud “Featured Partner” live streaming/podcast series featuring electronic music DJ’s/Producers via live mixes/interviews and streamed/distributed to a global audience. TheDJSessions.com

The series constantly places in the “Top Ten” on Twitch Music and the “Top Five” in the “Electronic Music”, “DJ”, “Dance Music” categories. TDJS is rated in the Top 0.11% of live streaming shows on Twitch out of millions of live streamers.

“The DJ Sessions” is listed in the Feedspot directory as one of the Top 60 EDM Podcasts.

It has also been recognized by Apple twice as a “New and Noteworthy” podcast and featured three times in the Apple Music Store video podcast section. UStream and Livestream have also listed the series as a “Featured” stream on their platforms since its inception.

The series is also streamed live to multiple other platforms and hosted on several podcast sites. It has a combined live streaming/podcast audience is over 125,000 viewers per week.

With over 2,600 episodes produced over the last 16 years “The DJ Sessions” has featured international artists such as: BTYoungr, Dr. FreschFerry CorstenSevennDroveMartin TrevyJacob Henry, Nathassia aka Goddess is a DJ, WukiDiscoKittyMoon BeatsBarnacle BoiSpag HeddyScott SlyterSimply CityRob GeeMickeJerry DavilaSpeakerHoneySickotoyTeenage MutantsWooliSomnaGamuel SoriCurbiAlex WhalenVintage & MorelliNetskyRich DietZStylustBexxieChuwe, ProffMuzzRaphaelleBorisMJ ColeFlipsideRoss HarperDJ S.K.T., SkeeterBissen2SOONKayzoSabatKatie ChonacasDJ FabioHomemadeHollaphonicLady WaksDr. UshuuArty/Alpha 9, Miri Ben-AriDJ RubyDJ ColetteNima GorjiKaspar TasaneAndy CaldwellParty ShirtPlastik FunkENDOJohn TejadaHossAlejandroDJ Sash UArkleyBee BeeCozmic CatSuperstar DJ KeokiCrystal WatersSwedish Egil, Martin EyererDezarateMaddy O’NealSonic UnionLea LunaBelle HumbleMarc MarzenitRicky DiscoAthenaLuvMaximillianSaeed YounanInkfishKidd MikeMichael AnthonyThey KissDownuprightHarry “the Bigdog” JamisonDJ TigerDJ Aleksandra22BulletsCarlo AstutiMr JammerKevin KrissenAmir ShararaCoke BeatsDanny DarkoDJ PlaturnTyler StoneChris CocoPurple FlyDan MarcianoJohan BlendeAmber LongRobot KochRobert Babicz, KHAG3ElohimHausmanJaxx & VegaYves VAyokayLeandro Da SilvaThe Space BrothersJarod GlaweJens LissatLotusBeard-o-BeesLuke the KnifeAlex BauArroyo LowCamo & CrookedANGAmon TobinVoicians, Florian KruseDave SummitBingo PlayersCoke Beats, MiMOSADrasenYves LaRockRay OkparaLindsey StirlingMakoDistinctStill LifeSaint KidyakiBrothersHeiko LauxRetroidPiemTocadiscoNakadiaProtocultureSebastian BronkToronto is BrokenTeddy CreamMizeyesisSimon PattersonMorgan PageJesCut ChemistThe HimJudge JulesDubFXThievery CorporationSNBRNBjorn AkessonAlchimystSander Van DornRudosaHollaphonicDJs From MarsGAWPDavid MoralesRoxanneJB & ScoobaSpektralKissy Sell OutMassimo VivonaMoullinexFuturistic Polar BearsManyFewJoe StoneRebootTruncate, Scotty BoyDoctor NiemanJody WisternoffThousand FingersBenny BennasiDance LoudChristopher LawrenceOliver TwiztRicardo TorresPatricia BalogeAlex Harrington4 StringsSunshine JonesElite ForceRevolvrKenneth ThomasPaul OakenfoldGeorge AcostaReid SpeedTyDiDonald GlaudeJimboRicardo TorresHotel GarudaBryn LiedlRodgKemsMr. SamSteve AokiFuntcaseDirtyloudMarco BaileyDirtmonkeyThe Crystal MethodBeltekDarin EpsilonKyau & AlbertKutskiVaski, MoguaiBlackliquidSunny LaxMatt Darey, and many more.

In addition to featuring international artists TDJS focuses on local talent based on the US West Coast. Hundreds of local DJ’s have been featured on the show along with top industry professionals.

We have recently launched v3.3 our website that now features our current live streams/past episodes in a much more user-friendly mobile/social environment. We have now added an “Music” section, site wide audio player, transcoding, captions, and translation into over 100 languages, There is also mobile app (Apple/Android) and VR Nightclubs (Beta in VR Chat).

About The DJ Sessions Event Services –

TDJSES is a 501c3/WA State Non-Profit/Charitable organization that’s main purpose is to provide music, art, fashion, dance, and entertainment to local and regional communities via events and video production programming distributed via live and archival viewing.

For all press inquiries regarding “The DJ Sessions”, or to schedule an interview with Darran Bruce, please contact us at info@thedjsessions.com.

Transcript

[Darran]
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the DJ Sessions presents the virtual sessions. I’m your host Darren and right now I’m sitting in the virtual studios as you know it in Seattle, Washington where it’s a wonderful hot and sunny day out here and I got a beautiful view of Mount Rainier out of my place but coming in all the way from the east coast and along with my sidekick Doja the cat, the DJ Sessions mascot, we have Jim the podcast sherpa coming in from the east coast New York. How’s it going today Jim?

Hey Darren, thanks a lot for having me on your show. Absolutely, so you know you do a podcast based on other podcasts. That’s an interesting concept.

You know in all my years of doing that I’ve heard you know guys I’ve heard of reviews podcasts that do reviews on other shows but I’ve never heard about one that does a review of other podcasts. That’s interesting. Tell our DJ Sessions viewers about that, about your show, the podcast picks.

[Jim]
Sure, well do you mind if I go into a little bit about the evolution of the show? Absolutely. Okay, the show started essentially because of death.

[Darran]
Oh okay.

[Jim]
But not of a person, don’t worry, don’t worry. Oh okay. So a while back you know those original iPods that you had that held like 27,000 songs.

Yeah. Like the first generation ones. I used to have one of those at my job and I would just listen to those all day.

I had about 13,000 songs on it. I listened to like a lot of different music and everything like that and you know this is a while back and one day the iPod died and they were no longer making that version so they were making a lot smaller ones. I said they only had like a thousand songs.

I’m like I’m not going to be able to pick a thousand songs out of you know this library that I had. So I was like what else am I going to listen to and I was looking on my phone and I saw this thing about podcasts and I said let me try some of these out because some of the people I’ve heard of some of the people I did not and you know I looked into things that I might be interested in. Sometimes you just sample them and then you go no not for me.

Another times you’re like hey you know I can relate to this guy and you know you make that part of your playlist. So after a while I was really getting into podcasts and I saw an app where it said you could you know do your own podcast and I said you know what I’ve been getting hooked on this and I had a little bit of DJ experience in college nothing like nothing to write home about. I think we we usually finish behind static in the ratings if there were ratings.

So I just did a podcast about podcasts. I figured well this you know I’m not an expert on true crime. I’m not a sports expert.

I’m not a movie guy. So here I am. Nice and what year did you start this this in?

In 2019 actually right before COVID.

[Darran]
Okay okay awesome. So you were kind of in the era of doing a podcast before the podcast boom as we call it. When in 2020 I call 2020 to 2022-ish almost.

The look at me years for online distribution because every other social media post out there was look at my podcast. Look at my live stream. Look at my podcast.

Look at my live stream. Look at my podcast. Look at my live stream and it was just so floated overloaded and after doing podcasting.

I mean I’ve been podcasting since 2005 and I mean the backbone of our whole library system is a basically a podcast series. I mean I didn’t get into live streaming until 2009 late 2009. So almost anniversary is October September October 2009 but really I just to make the number simple we started in 2010.

But you know podcasting is our backbone of our library and you know we have over 2600 episodes over the years and you know it’s just such an awesome medium especially coming out of broadcast television. I started in public access myself when I was 18 years old and I was playing with my dad’s video camera before that in high school and all that fun stuff. But you really only had broadcast television and public access to distribute and even then you had finite you had limited amount of time.

You had limited time slots so you know not everybody in the world could get on. There was a lottery system for public access in King County where I grew Seattle basically. If you didn’t make the lottery then you didn’t have a time slot you know and your show didn’t go anywhere but your own VHS tape in your living room.

[Jim]
Did you do DJ shows when you were on public access?

[Darran]
No well interesting enough I worked on a first on public access. I started working on a hip-hop television show with a friend of mine called The Kulot Network and that show was a hip-hop R&B show that aired here in kind of regional because I lived in one county he lived in another county. You could only broadcast if you lived in that county so I would take the tapes from him and in the King County area take them up to Snohomish County where I lived and would air them up there then he had somebody else down in Pierce County that would get the tapes and put them on the Pierce County public access down there.

So it’s kind of all like a pretty wide area of running these shows. Nobody else in public access did this. They just never knew how to really figure it out.

Distribution right? So we worked on that for about eight years and then went and we had an opportunity to work on a broadcast pilot together see a pilot season and quickly went from production assistant over glorified production assistant to associate producer like overnight of a broadcast television show and that got me into the real business of television because even then that was 2000 YouTube wasn’t out yet. There was no online video.

There was no definitely no I mean online video was e-bombs and you’re looking at a video like this big you know watching something and it just wasn’t there. There was no way to look up a video on your pocket. There was no way to watch computers on the go you know video on the go really.

So there were audio podcasts that were starting to come out but we were video. We’re broadcast television guys. We’re video, video, video, video.

So you know broke away from there and went into college and about a year after I went to school I launched my first broadcast television show to Fox here in the local market and then came back later rebranded the series and launched it back to we had 13 stations with like nine separate television shows ready to air pilot episodes and looking for millions of sponsorship money hopping down the west coast all that fun stuff. But in 2005 podcasting came out and we kind of bypassed the whole YouTube thing thinking that YouTube was going to be what you see TikTok now.

TikTok is not a broadcast television format. It’s not a long video format. It’s not meant to sit there and watch a TikTok video.

That’s what we thought. That’s what was flooding YouTube at the time and we go we’re not that so maybe something will come out that will be more broadcast related like Hulu for TV shows. I think even at that time YouTube had an upload limit of 15 minutes.

So we couldn’t even put a full half hour episode of ours into YouTube at the time and it was very interesting. So I was working for Apple and lo and behold the video iPod got announced and I was working while I was working for Apple I was in retail. I saw the photo iPod come out and realized I said wait a second if they can make a non-color screen with a click wheel and hold this much data on a hard drive now they’re making a color screen on an iPod.

What would it take to make a watered down version to run a QuickTime file on this color screen and play it on an iPod. This has to be coming out. This has to be coming.

I knew it. Now of course Steve keeping all everything under wraps. I’m not trying to dominate the conversation.

I know I’m supposed to be interviewing you but it’s getting in the background. You know Steve came out and the moment that video iPod came out I was like okay how do we get our shows onto those iPods and the thing was there was no specs for it. They couldn’t announce this.

Steve kept things very quiet. They didn’t even have any television deals in place because they didn’t want to leak to the television networks like NBC, CBS, ABC to all those stations that we couldn’t put their shows online to download and pay 99 cents. They didn’t have any of those deals talked about really probably at some real high upper real trust levels but the things hadn’t been put in the works because they didn’t want the word getting out.

So when the iPods shipped to the stores every Apple store in the world they had iPods but they had no videos on them. And so we at our store went around and I figured out the specs to load videos onto an iPod and figured out how to do it and we loaded it into the back end system so all the iPods in the store would refresh because on 24 hours all the computers and everything like refreshes and we loaded all the iPods in the store with our episodes so when people came in we could at least show them a video playing on the iPod.

They’d be like well how’d you get your what’s this video that’s on here what’s the show like that’s our pilot series that we made. I worked with employees in the store that worked on my show. Long story short on top of that the iTunes store was just a database of podcasts.

At the time it was not all decked out like it is now and I talked to somebody at Apple and they said I said hey how do we get our listing in the podcast store. He says okay what’s your URL what’s your XML what’s your feed all that fun stuff and I said oh here it is here it is. He goes okay well just I got something for you but I can’t tell you just wait till Thursday just go to iTunes on Thursday.

I said okay what’s happening on Thursday I can’t tell you but go to iTunes on Thursday. What they did is iTunes they went and they made a whole podcast section. This is right after the video iPod had come out like almost instantaneously a couple weeks and they made different sections for different types of genres of podcasts which were probably 90% audio podcasts at the time because nobody thought about making a video podcast because what are we going to do with it subscribe to a video but it was all audio.

So basically and people were using YouTube of course and it wasn’t too hard to go from a YouTube model to a make a video and put it over here onto a server and have a podcast downloaded but we debuted in the iTunes store at position number 48 out of 50 in the video podcast section. So you can imagine what that did for our downloads with the hit of the video iPod coming out and then we’re launched in this brand new store in front of Apple and top 50 podcasts in the world and we went from position 50 to position number 24. At one point we were doing 300,000 downloads a week and we’re like go daddy’s like what are you doing you’re breaking our servers over here basically.

You know that was interesting and then but we didn’t know how to monetize it because nobody had built in there was no Nielsen ratings for podcasts. So how do you tell somebody oh we’re charging this much money for our podcast our email database we were just brand new out of the box at doing this so we never built an email database of people because we were a local Seattle show with no national distribution and we like I said we didn’t we’re just coming into the YouTube era. So anyways that’s the notoriety out of that been featured new and noteworthy and the kind of I can go into the history of everything forward to that but that’s how we got into podcasting over here at the DJ set with ITV productions which later on kind of became the DJ sessions was a branch off of ITV productions but yeah that’s kind of the story of how we got into podcasting and I’ve coached a lot of people talked with a lot of people about podcasting in the past. You know I think it’s a great medium because you can get out there and the one cool thing is I mean of course YouTube has a subscription model but people could subscribe to the podcast when they plugged in their iPod or when they sync their iPod it would download those episodes to their computer would automatically transfer them now that we got the iPhones hit on the Wi-Fi and all that just brings the episode right in and says you got a new podcast series.

So I think it’s still a great underexploited medium for people to reach people and share and there’s like Guy says there’s something out there for everyone. You’re going to find something out there. You’re going to find a podcast series.

It could suck but you’re going to find something out there on it. You go back and you look at people like Joe Rogan or Gary Vaynerchuk and you look at some of these early starters and you look at their footage and what the clips were like back then and what their shows were like when they first started and then now they’re all big production you know money money money money Spotify Spotify all that fun stuff. You know I think there’s definitely a medium for people to get out there and use podcasting as a distribution platform which obviously killed you know like the online streaming and online music stores kind of radio’s gone well blogs killed you know the internet killed print music stores killed radio podcasting and online video is basically taken away from television that on-demand access too you know you just don’t get that from TV and but now even the TV shows the companies there you can go and download a whole season if you want right you know and it just comes right to your phone as the new shows come in so it’s all fun new technology stuff I can go on and on about we’re here to talk with you about podcast picks not me and my history because I can talk about that

[Jim]
but it’s true though there’s always the next wave of media and it’s a question of are you catching the right wave at the right time or are you ahead or did you miss the bus

[Darran]
well I tell this to people all the time I was doing my live streaming show for 10 years and people would come to me and the format they first they’d say okay we’re a DJ show we feature DJs we play DJs and like why would I want to watch a DJ online playing and I go first of all do you do you listen where do you listen to music you probably listen to it through your headphones that are coming off your iPhone or your Android you’re probably that’s how you listen to music so you can listen to the set and we do this but why would I want to watch it well nobody sits there and goes like this to a DJ set oh wow that was really cool he moved that knob that doesn’t happen if we do it visually I’m a video guy because we also do interviews as well but then people say why would I want to watch a DJ online and then they’d say I’d say well we’re a featured partner with twitch and they go what’s twitch and I go oh this or most time they go isn’t twitch for video gamers and I’ll be like okay then this wonderful thing it’s not a wonderful thing but this wonderful thing called pandy hit and everybody in the world wanted to be a podcaster and everybody in the world now knew what live streaming was because everybody in the world watching their friend either do a podcast you could probably go one degree of separation and probably have oh that person’s doing a podcast that person’s live streaming that person’s doing a podcast that person’s live streaming worked wonders for my business because now everyone freaking in 2020 finally learned how to zoom you know because that was the biggest thing if I tried to do a zoom interview with somebody prior to 2020 unless they were in corporate america and understood video conferencing mike would have said audio would have been terrible lighting would have been terrible internet connection probably maybe would have been there you know their camera resolution would have probably been you know it just would have been terrible you know and it’s like I never even thought about doing virtual interviews because we were always on the ground with people so that being said you know I’m grateful that that people kind of got an idea then when I went oh we’re a featured partner with twitch we’ve been doing our show for x amount of years we have this many episodes we have these celebrities that come on board oh you must know something yeah that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for 10 years you know so yeah again I’m taking the mic here it should be more about you and my cat needs to get off of the mouse it’s the cat of the mouse I like

[Jim]
that um it’s funny what you mentioned about zoom because I think my second guest I hadn’t really known how I was going to do these interviews first I was doing them on an app on my phone and my second guest of the show said did you ever use zoom and this is before covid and then I was like this is easy you know so I downloaded it I could figure it out you know I’m pretty smart technically and then like when covid hit and everybody was home and people didn’t know how to use it I was like I’ve been using this for about nine months already I felt like an old pro at it

[Darran]
yeah yeah it’s I for the better most part of 2000 I was answering a lot of questions to a lot of people and then started to realize wait a second you’re trying to start your own thing when you could have been working with me am I giving advice to my competition and they’re not paying me for it um I’m a nice guy but I went from giving 98 of my information away to giving 97 of my information away you know it’s like come on there’s the internet you’ll figure it out on your own just like I did and you’re still gonna have this this this this this this and this all to worry about and I’ll see you in six months when you don’t have a show at all because you’re gonna get disenfranchised because you have no marketing no plan of attack and no budget or anything you’re trying to put your show out there at the same time as everybody else in the world is you can only person can only watch one show at one time you know they can’t watch multiple shows at the same time and just because you think you’re hot and going on at friday night when people are going to want to be at home and they want a nightclub and I’m going on at 10 o’clock at night so is everyone else and it’s unlimited it’s not like you’re on a channel and you got that one block and you got their audience plus every celebrity went online live online as well so now you’re competing against that and it’s like oh okay so yeah the disenfranchisement technique is you know I was talking with a lot of people in 2020 2021 was you know they get online and they expect oh I’m gonna be out there and people I got friends on socials they’re gonna tune in and watch and they realize that’s not how this works that’s how this works I wonder if that’s like the first

[Jim]
thing that happens when people decide they’re doing a podcast that the delusions of grandeur just set right in like oh yeah all the all the sponsors are gonna come looking for me and I’m gonna make millions of dollars in merchandise and they don’t do any research they don’t do any

[Darran]
research and find out who they’re up against one who’s already doing content like that they’re probably not journalists if they went to college they might have written a research paper so they do they research well do they build good topics do they not just do a who what why where when do they do a okay I’m just gonna say you tell us about okay what about they’re not they’re not doing their research on their guests you know and really getting in-depth questions and singular questions or making it interesting shit they might not even know how to act or present on camera time words say things eloquently you’re going to the internet out there you know I mean it just took us time to make our website finally transcoded transcribed for for ADA and then you can also translate our site into over 100 different languages loosely but you know we’re trying to look to the world when it comes to somebody on our site they’re like oh this is an English site I’m not going to watch the show I don’t know what they’re saying but if they can translate it into French and read the transcription as it’s going they can see right where we’re at and follow along go oh now it’s not trying it’s only transcribed in English but still we’re working on getting more languages but those things you got to look the longer and marketing that’s the one thing I’ve noticed in film intelligent production my whole time people have a great idea for a movie they can have a great script they can have a great crew they can film a great film they get it in the can and then it sits on a shelf collecting dust or they submit it to a couple film festivals thinking that’s what our end goal was it’s going to have this festival a bunch of people are going to see it but they don’t understand there’s 10,000 other submissions into that film festival right and they can only play so many in the lineup that they have and so that was actually the original concept of my show Phantasmagoria was I had a short film my first show that I put on Fox here in Seattle I had the title for a show I had a concept for the show but that got destroyed once I saw Jackass come out which I didn’t know MKY2K was already by Bam Avengera was already being done before MTV picked him up with Johnny Oxford so I was like well that shit canned now what I’m going to do and I had this short film and I said well what if I showed my short film in my broadcast television show okay if I put into a film festival what’s the most amount of people that could see it at that film festival in Seattle as an independent short film 100 people for one night maybe maybe maybe and then if I had to show it multiple times some of these film film contests will say you can’t submit it multiple times if it’s ever been submitted anywhere else you can’t submit it to us because they don’t want people making 100 tapes and sending them out to everywhere it’s like you’ll only be into this one so I was like but if I put it on broadcast television in my own television show I could have 10,000 to 13,000 people see that and I could have that done weekly wait I got episode one in the can what am I going to do for another 12 episodes so I went to my short for my class that I was in in college and I started talking to some of the local film festivals and got all their rejects and put my show did phantasm going together based on that but yeah content is is king you know and then what’s your how often you can deliver this content this next question are you going to do a weekly okay if you’re how long are you going to if it’s going to be a weekly great how long is that episode going to be it’s 10 minutes 15 30 an hour what are you going to are you going to have a co-host how are you going to be able to do this with your current work schedule you’re now going into production you’re going into audio engineering you’re going into internet distribution and then you’re also going to be your own social media manager and it’s not just pushing it to your friends on facebook we’re only five percent of maybe now five percent of your people see your post anyways on facebook so you know all that fun stuff are you going into groups and forums and are you getting interesting guests you know rather than johnny down the block let’s sit in the room and smoke some weed and talk about no I don’t have anything against smoking weed but you know uh you know talking about something uh you know is it going to be engaging so um all those factors come into play when doing a podcast you know and I think a lot of people I knew I said it you’re going to see a 60 increase in podcasting and live streaming but once doors open back up after pandy all those people are doing and getting no gratification no instant gratification yeah I did a podcast once I tried it out and you know and we saw that the ones that stuck with it are still going but the ones that are like nope okay or out because they found out it takes time and you’re doing this for viewership you nobody gets on stage and says I’m only doing this on stage for myself and nobody has unless you’re a total narcissist um but you know most people want to put something on be on stage because they want an audience they want to share it with people and they want that gratification back somebody going I watched your show and that was awesome I learned something new I saw something I heard something wow and I shared it with all my friends too you’re spot on I’m going to keep coming back and I’m going to tell everyone about it that’s a fan you want your fans you know you want your fans your followers so when people don’t prepare for that that’s very hard yeah anyways again I could talk about

[Jim]
podcasting for eons probably it’s funny uh last week uh in one of the shows that I did I actually made a comment about social media and when you talk about how things changed after the pandemic uh during COVID I think like especially like Facebook and stuff they were okay with you posting the link to your episodes right on Facebook and right on Twitter you know and and there was a little bit more of a bond between these social media sites and podcasts but after that and with all the political stuff that’s going on like especially like I think Facebook and Twitter have become like you know I’m right and you know I don’t care about anything else there’s there’s no more of that you know trying to link with people and connect with people about things that are going on and uh and checking out episodes an article I just read it got emailed

[Darran]
to me because I’m also in an advertising company as well and something just came through and mine’s an out-of-home advertising so we do mobile in a nutshell mobile billboard trucks and the article came through saying basically what’s happening is the social media companies are down playing down ranking external links and not only that social influencers are also not having as much pull as they used to because it’s come off as too commercial now and they know people know they’re an influencer so they know you’re probably being paid for that person to talk about you but out of home advertising and people are tuning it out now too I mean I go to my Facebook on my phone it’s like almost every third fourth not even that every second or third is a is a sponsored post right it’s like wait a second wait a second wait a second wait a second what happened to just being the friends wall you know you can go it’s a workaround now to get to just see your friends posts you know as opposed to your top top stories and it’s all this shit and then um you know when it used to be just your friends wall and then even posting you know it’s it’s only depends on the ratio it’s like five percent of your people might see if you had a thousand people you know five percent is going to be 50 people might see it how many are going to really interact with that if they’re not just strolling through because it’s something that really pertains to them are they gonna even if they don’t they don’t like it anymore you know they don’t see it and so you’re sitting there going I mean I’m going through this right now with Facebook going this medium sucks sorry dickhead zuck you lost me bro you know my Facebook channel will be going away shortly yeah I know I see a lot of people on Facebook and they’re posting but you just don’t get it you know you don’t getting that interaction like you are with TikTok or Instagram and they’re trying to play catch up you know and it’s like I posted the mediums because they’re there there are people in my demographic that’s like using Facebook they don’t understand Instagram or they don’t get TikTok and I get that um me being a media I have to be in all places I mean I’m with industry professionals some of the world’s top producers DJs and they’re like gosh I used to you know what happened to the industry when I could focus on music now a lot of my time spent focusing on social media or if I don’t I fall by the wayside I may have 10,000 people on Instagram I post I get stuff going but you have somebody posting they have 100,000 people following on on Instagram and they get engagement and they’re not even really producing tracks I’ve been working for 20 years they’re and they’re getting booked for all the shows and I’m like why am I not getting booked am I just chopped liver I’m still I’m way higher more higher capital it’s a very it’s a very fickle game of the social media thing and they don’t will it eventually implode in itself that’s the thing that Tyson Degrassi I think I hope I said that right how Neil Degrasse Tyson yeah thank you I always say his name wrong I should sorry please don’t murder me out there um he said you know AI could be the one thing that actually kills social media because you’re not going to know if that’s really the person posting it or if it’s made up or or you’re going to come in you’re going to write something but then AI is going to rewrite it for you so it looks all nice and pretty and so it gets it’s like wait a second with everybody doing that now once so first of all we’re not getting the inflection when somebody writes something so that’s being lost in translation too you have something else rewriting what you wrote to make it be out there and people think you they what they’re going to people are going to sound like they’re more educated than they are famous joke of mine that I learned a long time ago people appear bright light travels faster than sound that’s why people appear brighter than they are before they open their mouths very true you know and so you know um that kind of that that’s going to happen and and it’s just the same things happen in the online blog world I see this I think there’s blow there’s going to be blowback all the writers there’s writers out there that are using AI to generate their articles you know and there’s I mean the people that I know that run publishing companies and magazines that say they’ve known writers for years that always wrote awesome now they’re submitting them stuff and they put them through an AI check and they go this was written by AI what are you doing you’re submitting this AI that ruins our credibility that we’re having AI generated articles and you’re slapping your name on it you know you I I’m all about using AI to research write me an outline help me out here I’m researching something bring me this and then let me go figure it out and put my own words in there I think we’re going to see schools going to an online cloud system where you’re going to have to type in everything it’s going to track your key tracker motions inside of a cloud-based application to make sure you’re not copying and pasting from the internet they had a kid who graduated from college not that I’m against it but he’s like I got my degree and here’s my chatbot GPT that helped me write all my papers and do all this and showed it at graduation and it’s like he’s going to walk up to the podium you know and it’s like how you think about stuff like that and it’s like at least that’s the one thing I love that’s true about the DJ sessions when I do an episode is that I’m really interviewing the person right you’re talking to me it’s transcribed and their voice and I don’t cut the episode I don’t edit the episode you know I take that transcription I do we’ll tell people straight up I’ll take that transcription I’ll throw it over to chat GPT and I’ll say make me some show notes make me summarize this for me you know do that but it’s pulling from actual factual data right it’s not creating the episode for me it’s not creating the questions for me I still have to go research the person and get out there and you know put something together I don’t say hey I’m introducing Jim the podcast Sherpa today write me 20 questions to ask him I still have to ask the questions and present it in a format that’s going to be engaging is tell me about podcasting Jim what made you start in podcasting Jim you know it’s like come on you gotta have some fun with this and that’s one thing I learned in live streaming is I used to be very show has to be edited the take has to be done right let’s go back and do another take and nope with live hey whatever the F goes it goes and that’s what’s going out there and I’m done shows in the can have a nice day peeps because you aren’t paying me enough to go back and spend time to edit this and you can’t deal with live streaming and knowing the scrubs go do it yourself and that

[Jim]
was I go ahead I’ll let you try me go ahead no you’re talking about AI I actually had a little bit of a mini podcast just with AI because I use it in my show to do the bad jokes in the beginning of the show so what I did was I did a trivia podcast and called fake people real trivia and you know we would pick actual trivia I did my research and just had like the AI voices do the show and I wasn’t on it because I was thinking like well what’s the difference between me giving this information and an AI voice giving them you know it actually sounds a little smoother with an AI as long as the inflection is right like you know that’s that’s the big thing so I just kind of put it out there and yeah and they even kind of make fun of themselves they make

[Darran]
fun of me on the show so yeah it’s it’s it’s interesting I just know that timberland just signed the first AI artist that’s a little scary let’s see where that goes uh I mean could I could I eventually have an AI generated host I’d love to be one of the first podcasts with a true I’m sure somebody’s already doing it I’m sure somebody’s out there you know making it happen but me Darren the personality of being an AI host and I just pumped the questions in and say boot in a fun spirited happy manner kind of way and it’s like I mean I would probably do it more like a max hedgerow I know you’re an 80s guy kind of like there there there hi Jim Jim Jim how’s it going you know kind of funny and we just we just dated ourselves by the way

[Jim]
well nobody else will date me that’s okay it’s from the 80s kids look it up that’s right

[Darran]
pre-google fun show by the way that was always a fun show um but uh that being said you know what is how is AI going to change things but again you know will it will it really knock things down and that’s why you know I’m recently going out and talking to big big big publishing companies or brands in the electronic music industry saying look the reason why you want to syndicate my content or the reason why you want to bring me on board or even repurpose and put my interviews uh in your publications is because I’m really doing the interviews you know a lot of these publications they’ll send 10 questions like imagine if I sent you 10 questions Jim and said you fill in the answers to the questions am I doing is that reporting that’s not I could have a list I have a list of 570 questions I could just pick 10 of them and go here let me email off Jim okay rinse wash repeat oh yeah I did that interview I come back I put in the google docs I look for any formatting errors or just say format go to the chat GPT and say format this for me good good good good good I send you back a copy you say that looks good I post it on my website that’s not friggin interviewing right that’s not I’ve only had

[Jim]
two guests that uh wanted to know the questions in advance yeah you know one of them was a model but I think the problem was people were probably getting disgusting with her and her boyfriend is her manager and he was probably like look I don’t have to have you put up with this so I understood that and then there was someone else who had a show I was like we’re just gonna have a conversation it was like I’m not gonna try and trip you up this is the math quiz or anything like that

[Darran]
when people ask me that I say no I don’t I don’t because I do my research an hour before because I want to get the most current events of what’s going on even what I want to what they just posted this morning on social media you know and something else might pop up in the industry I don’t I go look I don’t go into anything controversial and I’m really what I say is if you really want to see my interview style go back and watch one of my 2600 episodes exactly exactly how it goes down and do you think I could get this long list of all these people on if I tried to Barbara Walters them Oprah Winfrey them making them cry get controversial you know ask that you know you can obviously put if there anything you don’t want me to talk about but very rarely does it happen unless there’s like some DJ battle going on or them shit talking each other or something but other than that it’s like no we’re here to find out about I say we stick to electronic music industry related questions current you know maybe some current industry events some social some humor we just chat for an hour but you know I like to get in some in-depth in your mind into your professional and I’m just not who what why where when you know you know that kind of stuff but uh you know they usually get a general feel for it I rarely don’t ever get turned down once I do that what does I say no sometimes they might want questions in advance though because they don’t speak very they don’t speak English very well I can understand that but I’m still like you got to understand that I could send you the questions but if they say something that might spawn a question that wasn’t on the list right and what if I ask the question and then they give me some short answer for it and there’s nothing to play off of you know like oh okay so you did an event yes I did how was it it was fun okay it’s like oh you got a half hour to elaborate on my event so I can’t answer that question yeah oh come on go back if that’s too much for you then you probably have the wrong PR manager who isn’t prepping you to do interviews if you’re going to be out there wanting to do interviews you should probably prep yourself on doing interviews and get up to speed on that people

[Jim]
have you ever had like a guest where like you finished up and they go oh I’ve never been interviewed before you’re like really

[Darran]
typically I go from a list of the top 20,000 DJs in the world and right now my list is about 4,400 strong probably anyone down to I mean I’m in my three thousands right now getting ready to send out some invites tonight because I send out invites every week about three four hundred invites a week and typically at that point most of these people have a booking manager at least somebody’s booking if they’re not doing it themselves and they got their own online persona they have a booking manager that’s helping them get gigs which is taking a percentage and or they have a PR manager who’s routing because they’re with a collective or a group so if they have a PR person I feel very comfortable going into that situation booking yes they probably have been interviewed or had a microphone on them at some point at some festival some show some fan backstage hey you’re in town let me do an interview or some magazine especially if they’re releasing albums and they’re releasing tracks they’re working with a label so they know they got to do some promo there put it out on the social media you know people ask questions so vicariously just by being an entertainer it’s up they’re gonna have questions ask them whether it’s by fans or media people so when I come across I come across as like hey I’m getting our pretend our DJ sessions audience doesn’t know who you are and we’re interviewing you because I don’t know who you are maybe sometimes I do know who they are sometimes I don’t know who they are and we’re getting to know you for the first time and tell us about the cool shit you’re working on tell us about some cool shit you’ve been working on and you know I mean in the nutshell I’ll you know and then tell us about you know uh what what would you do this that’s this that’s this that’s it you know and just kind of build an interview around that and have a good time doing it um been successful with that so far I don’t think I’ve ever had a DJ ask me to take an episode down um that they were uncomfortable oh one DJ once thinks he thought he oh I said something he like made a joke a comment and then he came back to me later said hey can you edit that out because I don’t want that to go it was kind of at a wrong time in the industry or world this he didn’t say anything bad if somebody wanted to take it that way it could but I was like don’t worry about that there our audience is not critical like that you know um I mean if you want to go that far somebody can say oh well Darren you just you interview mostly men on your show and so you’re against women DJs I’m like no it just happens to be that 90% of the DJs in the world are men you know it’s like I try to ask women to be on somebody could poke fun at something

[Jim]
you know and I guess it kind of makes it a little bit easier for you because you know DJs the nature of your show they would have to know how to engage with the public they’re not going to just go in there and hide and just spin music and not you know not acknowledge the crowd or anything like that they have to have some sort of setting going on yeah

[Darran]
they’re an entertainer on stage so they know they have that public persona nobody’s like nobody says I want to be a DJ but I want to play only to rooms full of empty people right okay that’s called a bedroom DJ so why am I going to book you to play my show if you’re not going to have an audience or no it doesn’t happen that way so yeah most of them are really pretty pretty laid back ready to go they talk to people they’ve already been pseudo interviewed by the public just by being out there shaking hands and pitching who they are and talking about who they are and what they bring to the table and why they should be booked over another DJ and sell themselves for that matter so yeah if I was innovating non-show business people that might be a different story you know people that aren’t necessarily in the limelight so much are playing in front of hundreds to

[Jim]
hundreds of thousands of people you know I’ve had a couple of conversations where I really want to say like you know you really shouldn’t do this this is a good look for you I’m sorry I missed

[Darran]
the first part there was an airplane going by for a second what was that oh I said uh I’ve had

[Jim]
interviews where I kind of got the feeling like I wanted to say to them you know maybe you shouldn’t do this this isn’t a good look for you you’re not you’re not presenting yourself in a positive

[Darran]
light I won’t drop the name but I was looking up you know looking up some stuff on you before the show started and there was somebody that you had on the show that I had met right in the like I think the beginning of Pandy and um you recently commented there’s something on your Facebook about her I won’t stop the name Brandy what’s up if you’re gonna watch this oh Brandy Singleton sure yeah so she started podcast we both met each other online and she just started podcasting and I was giving her a lot of tips and a lot of advice in those early days her and walking her through you know like hey just hang in there just do your show get your con you know and and you know over the years just kind of lost touch get busy whatever but I saw her name pop up on your stuff and I was like oh cool you know it looks like she’s still into this still in it to win it and that’s kind of out of out of 2020 you know came a saying that I said not to like have a nose stuck up in the air that I’m better than anyone but it’s kind of like okay great you want a podcast series you want to do a podcast series that’s awesome you do all this stuff I said why don’t you come back to me when you get 100 episodes under your belt if you’re serious about doing this really serious about doing it and that’s doing it if you’re and if you’re on a basis of doing to really have frequency to really be relevant I’ve seen this you’ve really got to be almost pushing out something once a week otherwise people just lose you they’ll find something else they’ll find something new they’ll lose you if you’re not there you’re not in their inbox you’re not there on a regularly scheduled time with regularly scheduled content you lose that I just went through an eight and a half month hiatus and I’m almost having to re-pick up my audience again and get back in their face because there’s been so much that’s happened in the last eight months that I haven’t been out there that I’m even have to rekindle relationships with people that were on my hit list all the time and they’re like well you haven’t done anything for eight months I go yeah am I not allowed to take a break you know I was doing a lot of back end stuff but no foreground stuff so just my machine is all there well oiled but you take that break as quick as this audience goes I’m off this interview I’m on to the next one I’m on to the next shiny object so you got to build that momentum back up and if you don’t have a infrastructure in place or a marketing plan in place or know how you’re going to basically get yourself in front of those thousands of viewers again or even a new target audience all over again and retarget producer stuff most people don’t have to worry about losing sleep over this at night but I do I’m not sure you know you have that that’s

[Jim]
even kind of evident in like when you look at some of the podcast charts too where one week you know the show is number one and then the next week it’s like number 89 because you know people found a new shiny object that they want to listen to yeah and it could have been a blurb in a magazine

[Darran]
you know it could have been a blurb in a magazine it could have been a you know you paid an influencer 250 bucks that has a you know a bunch of people and they go boo and then all of a sudden everyone checks it out but you got to understand that kind of marketing it’s you’ve got to be able to sustain that kind of stuff and some people say oh you buy the fake followers the fake viewers you buy the influencers that’s all cheating you know who the people that are bitching about that are the ones that are having money they know how to market that’s just new forms of marketing you know getting out there I mean the old school way of oh let me even go on pay-per-click or buying ads on Facebook targeted ads on Facebook or targeted ads on Instagram well you’re buying ads that’s how so many people watch you oh you mean that I carve out a little bit of my income to put into a marketing budget even if it’s 50 bucks a week you know you’re at least putting something there if it’s a local podcast that might help but if it’s a national or international podcast probably ain’t gonna get you much but if you’re smart you go back and look at your podcast statistics you might be able to say oh wow I get a thousand downloads a week and a hundred of those are coming from New Jersey or a hundred of those are coming from Sacramento well let me go pump in you know 50 bucks a week into the Sacramento Instagram market targeting these kind of people that I kind of see that are watching my show and see what happens there let me do that to New Jersey too and then all of a sudden you’re like whoa this is really kind of catching on in those markets and you can build from there and I guess because I have two business degrees this stuff makes sense to me but most people it’s true you know there’s like I put it out there look at me look at me you know I mean it doesn’t yeah and so yeah that disenfranchise happens very quickly well you know um Jim we’re gonna get into some interesting stuff now with you here uh we could talk podcasting all day long and as you know I’ve been doing a lot of talking so far so again we’re gonna bring it back to you I want to know what this whole obsession with knitting is what’s that all about knitting

[Jim]
go from podcasting to knitting you don’t have a knitting podcast do you I I do not know how to knit and I was always wondered could you actually do a knitting podcast they’re out there you know yeah and probably obviously on YouTube because I think if you just talked about it people would be like I don’t know what’s going on that’s something where you really need the uh the visual element and you know I would be like surprised you know you see these podcasts hosting look I made a sweater and that’s the big claim to fame that they made a sweater you know it’s it’s

[Darran]
any topic out there you you can you can find it there’s going to be an audience for it I mean that’s the thing is it’s it’s I probably there probably isn’t one stone unturned that if you went topic here topic here even at this level and then you go to the sub genres and then the sub genre sub genre and you can focus on just that if you wanted to talk about just hamburgers you know and that’s all it’s going to be is hamburgers or you know side dishes or whatever it is you could do a show just about that you know and that’s again carving out your niche maybe somebody watches the chef show to make the perfect steak but it doesn’t say how to make the side just so they go to the side dish show and watch the side dish show and hey you know this compliments of it and if you know how to do stuff right you can actually go to those podcasts or go to those videos on youtube and directly target ads in those podcasts for your own show that’s right so if you know how to do some smart stuff like that it’s not really smart stuff but it’s it’s there to target you know those viewers just go hey or twitch you know you can I think I think you can target specific shows on twitch you might be able to I’m gonna have to look into that how you have a totally different marketing system and that’s part of the two two to three percent that the world doesn’t get to know about so that’s like I’ll tell you a lot of stuff but I’m not going to tell you how I market my shows how I get our viewers how I know there’s a lot of I have everyone sign an NDA when they come work for my company you are not to disclose this information and if I catch you taking it and going work for another company I will sue your ass so yes that works yeah but that being said knitting I guess you you’d mentioned that and just was curious about you have an obsession with knitting you don’t do in any podcast you just want to talk about knitting and throwing it out there Darren throwing it out there all right let’s go to the next topic now this is this this one I’m probably going to drive with you on even more than podcasting obscure 80s music oh yeah describe what you would consider obscure 80s music because the reason I bring this up and I think this is a fun topic my friend and I she introduced me to the game it was her game that she brought on to me but unfortunately I have a rule there’s a rule in the game that I can only play at a certain amount of times I’ll tell you what the game is okay the game is is if you hear a song playing and say we’re out and we’re having a beer we’re having a we’re at a bar we’re out drinking having fun if the song plays and you name the artist of the song the other person has to take a drink if you name the name of the song the other person has to take a drink but if you name them wrong you have to take the drinks okay there’s a ban on me with this game with her now because I’m 50 she’s 35 one there’s a ban on this game because my music selection is like an iPod with 35,000 songs in it and I get a ban that I can only play it five times because that’d be 10 drinks I mean this is in the course every three minutes taking two shots like nope you’re cut off I still play but I go okay I play but I go okay I’m cut off for this one and I have to rescind myself for the game but uh it’s like no fun playing with you Darren you’re too much I go can’t help it I have a photographic memory and remember stuff that I memorized so much stuff you know but uh obscure 80s music I’d like to see if maybe you can get me maybe maybe you could stump me on this and I don’t have anything to drink but but so what’s some obscure 80s music obscure let me let me think um maybe you name the song I’ll name the artist maybe maybe okay I think that would be best or if you name the artist I’ll

[Jim]
have to pick a song that they produce okay uh I know I had once one big hit well one relatively big hit and I’m not cheating over here either no no I know you don’t have google in front of you or anything like that uh the artist’s name was Fergal Sharkey not ringing a bell he had a song called a good heart like a good heart is hard to find it was like a poppy I think it was like I believe he was from Ireland if I’m not mistaken a good heart is hard to find

[Darran]
yeah huh if I heard it I might know it you stumped me that’s a first you want to throw it at me Darren uh oh okay um gosh I would know artists more than I know the songs when I know the songs um I feel that something I picked that comes to the top of mind would be way too popular and too easy to get let me see if I can get something obscure okay obscure 80s songs wait can I do artists or do I have to do the song title and you guess the whatever you want to do um oh gosh so many things are popping my head but I feel they’re so pop culture they’re like they’re like you’re gonna get them the problem is a lot of 80s music

[Jim]
ends up in commercials now so it’s like yeah I remember that when I heard it on the radio

[Darran]
um gosh and I just did we just had pride parade in our town I was driving our truck our mobile studio on playing a lot of 70s hits so a lot of 80s are in my mind right now I’m stumped you stumped me twice I’m trying to think of a really good one that’s gonna stump you but everything that comes to mind is like popular top at least top billboard top 100 for

[Jim]
every year of the 80s you know okay I’ll throw a song at you that the band was relatively they had their moment in the sun uh the song I don’t think it was their big their big hit but it was like another one of their singles that they did release the song is called love can be bad luck

[Darran]
was not was was not was did they do the song it was not was do everybody kill that dinosaur open the floor that’s right not moving now yeah you really want to see where I go with this this is where I the game gets a little further I would go do you know what movie that song was used in and who starred in the movie the walk the dinosaur walk the dinosaur oh uh this had to I think it may have been if that song came out in the 80s and this movie had to be

[Jim]
late 80s and I thought it was early 90s to just throw a guess out there I was wondering if it was like Encino man bingo starring Carly Shore and Brendan Fraser yep I was gonna say I was

[Darran]
yeah it was that they used that song in the movie and that’s where I even said to her hey if you can name the movie they use the song in the soundtrack she goes fuck you no memorize way too many movies you know this stuff so yeah good call though good call you got that one right on but yeah obscure 80s music are you a fan of obscure 80s music do you like the off

[Jim]
the beaten path type of stuff the b-sides or I like a lot I listen to the popular stuff I don’t turn my nose up at it or anything like that you know I’m I remember a quote that John Cougar Mellencamp or that’s John Mellencamp yeah that he said the music that you loved when you were 17 is the music that stays with you for the rest of your life and I wholeheartedly agree with that statement because I think when you’re at that age you know you’ve you’ve got the disposable income so you’re buying records so it’s like it means a little bit more to you you know as opposed to just hearing it on the radio and just kind of forgetting about it the next day absolutely

[Darran]
absolutely no I mean I’ve gone through some changes of my musical tastes over the years but you know I always tell people you know hey if I’m pissed off which is very rare but if I’m in an upset angry or even down mood just put on some 70s disco or some 80s pop and I’m like now I’m in a happy mood what are you doing all right fine the world is fine everything’s great you know go ahead I’m just gonna say oh I’m great I’m fine no it’s all good go ahead

[Jim]
now it’s interesting because you know we’re we’re older you know we’re not we’re not kids and you’re you’re interviewing these guys who were presenting new electronic dance music

[Darran]
how do you relate can you relate to that easily or um I mean I believe that you know when you look at electronic music as opposed to say a particular 80s synth sound 90s big band you know stadium rock or you’ll go into the 50s in that early beatles you know or even the 60s you know folk 70s disco you know electronic music can really I mean you can unless you’re really a connoisseur you can hear early 80s computer synth music but around the 90s it really started to take a turn you can take some of these 1990s mid-90s anthems play them today and with the exception of maybe hitting some of the low low-end bass they can now drop into songs especially this is this is relevant and and even old school music I get this all the time I’ll play 70s music in my truck then I’ll play a current hip-hop song in my truck the low-end just wasn’t there because audio systems weren’t designed for that they weren’t for engineering songs like that so you go to the mid-90s even late 90s early 2000 when electronic music or what people call edm I hate using that term electronic dance music or electronic community yeah started to take off um you could go back 25 years and listen to a song be like did that come out yesterday you know there’s you can appreciate the history of it basically yeah you can’t you listen and you’re like that song withstood the test of time it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s that much of a classic it can stand the the music industry with electronic music it can be oh house music is hot right now but then it moves the tech house then it moves the progressive house then it gets in the trance and progressive trance and the bpms go up and down of what’s hot and what’s not in these waves and a lot of music producers I’ve interviewed all the time they say look if you’re looking at the top charts and saying I want to go produce a house track as house is hot right now or I like house and that’s what’s hot right now I want to do that they say by the time you produce that track by the time you get it out there and everything else is out there it’s moved on to another genre so focus on producing what you like produce stuff you like and submit it to those genres and push up those chains you know to get up in there rather than try to be house or tech house or top of these areas because those are big name artists that are producing they have machines behind them that are putting money to go boom submit this radio play this they’re dropping that hands in the hands of the right people that are into those secret buckets of hey we got a new track coming out only 100 people are going to get access to this track and you know they know when they get this it means play this at your festival you know and people are going to go ape shit because we’re going to have radio promo we’re gonna have this we’re gonna have this we’re gonna have this we’re gonna have this and you’re gonna play it here first and the crowd’s gonna go ape shit and then everyone’s gonna hear and everyone’s gonna grab on to it when they go well I heard that dj play at first you know it’s it’s the mechanism of the back into the machine. So, you know, I think there’s, it’s that timeless, that electronic music in its form of electronic dance music has become at the forefront. You’re now, again, like you said, you’re hearing those 80 songs in the commercials.

You’re getting these electronic music songs into the commercials, into the workouts, into the video games, into a lot of our daily life when it was looked at, like, that’s not really a form of music because they’re not using instruments to make the music. And the fine making music. La, la, la, la, la, la.

Oh, am I a great world-class performer now like Pavarotti? No, but I just made a song. Is anyone going to buy it?

Probably not. I can license it and put it out there all I want. And if anyone ever uses it, la, la, la, la, la, la.

You know, I get to sue them for it because I, as captain. But my point is, is that there’s just the ease of the barrier to make music now. So, you know, it’s gone.

The barrier to DJ is almost completely non-existent. You got six-year-olds that are learning how to DJ now. Probably even four-year-olds, you know.

Understanding the concept of mixing tracks and track selection, you know. Computers, we got GarageBand and OliverMax. Those came out, you know, you got a studio, a built-in studio to make music and jingles for your podcasts, for your corporate videos, your home videos.

You got iMovie. That was another thing my friend and I talked about. You know, back in the day, we had video cameras.

Not everyone had a video camera. Even if you have a video camera, where are you gonna play it at? In your home, okay?

But once the iPhone came out and put a phone and a camera in everyone’s pocket, okay, now everyone’s a star. Everyone thinks they got a show. Everyone puts something on YouTube or TikTok, Instagram.

Look at me, I got a show. Define show. Do you have a business?

That’s where I would draw the line. Are you a hobbyist or do you have a business? Do you have a business license?

Are you earning revenue and income? You know, are you spending money? Are you just trying to wing it and do all the free stuff?

You know, not time and your money. I’m like, are you actually, hey, I make $5,000 a month, but I put $1,000 into marketing to my podcast every month. And, you know, that was always my thing that I explained this with artists, is you could be a DJ, okay, but if there’s 10 million DJs in the world, what differentiates you from one DJ over the next?

Okay, genres, okay, cool. Well, now you’re in this pool of genres, but what if this DJ produces a track and you don’t? Well, now you’re just a DJ looking to get booked.

This is a DJ who produces an album who’s also now in this marketplace, okay? And then if they have this DJ, if this DJ had $10,000, well, they’re now up in this bracket and you have $1,000, you’re in this bracket. You can only go, this DJ with 10 grand might be able to hire a PR person or get into a label.

And that label can go, look at what we got through their network of thousands and thousands of radio stations and everything. And then they start getting radio play. And they’re like, oh, come on, they’ll get radio play, I make checks.

Did you put any money? Entertainment is money. I don’t care if anyone comes to me and says otherwise.

Entertainment is a, I don’t wanna say people can’t get into entertainment, but if you wanna succeed, you gotta look at it like a business. It is a business. And in business, you need capital to operate.

This is business 101. And a lot of entertainment is spending a lot of money, hoping you can recoup that money. Hoping you can get it back.

How do you get that time back? How do you, I mean, the hours alone, I wanted to almost turn it into a reality television show podcast. Put a camera up in my office.

People think I just turn on a camera and I talk to you. At the end of the day, it’s done. There we go, show’s done.

Yep, that’s all I do for a living is just talk to people. No, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. If I’m not having to edit and hit a couple buttons afterwards, I’m on the clock almost, if I’m not sleeping, 24-7. It could be its own show, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Watching the actual backend of what goes on. Even if it was just sitting there watching me on my computer, going click, click, click, sending out 350 emails, clearing my databases, doing my social media setup, making deals, making phone calls, all the stuff that goes on the backend that people don’t see, the operations that go on for all this. And people think I have literally been accused of making $250,000 to more than $500,000 a year when I’m disabled, on SSI, was on food stamps and going to food banks not knowing how I was paying rent next month.

And I’m like, well, I must be doing something good as an entertainer to let people think that I’m making that. Really, that’s not the truth of it. And I almost thought of even creating, making my stock a penny stock so that I have to produce financials.

And if somebody could invest in my company for a penny, and then I’d be obligated to give them financials on the company because they own stock in my company. You go, here’s our financials. You see how far in the red we are.

This is what it would take to get us to the black. This is what it would take for you to even make a profit. And this is all true because you know it went through a third party accounting company who looks at all of our stuff.

And then you go, wow, I shouldn’t talk shit about Darren anymore. He really does this. I go, do you ever ask anyone else for their financials?

And remember that penny, it could be the next Bitcoin. That could be worth a million dollars one day. So you hold on to that penny.

I’ve never done that before, but it was kind of an inside joke that the perception of entertainment, what you put out there, how you build your image, your look. And again, that takes a toll. It takes time.

You know, and you got to be really committed to want to do it. And it doesn’t, somebody told me once, there are no Cinderella stories in this business. It happens overnight.

And you never know if that person did somehow come out of the woodworks. Did grandma pass away and they inherited the fortune, the family fortune? Did they win the lottery?

Did something come up, an injury claim that all of a sudden gave them some extra cash? And then they were able to buy microphones and buy this and buy that and rent. Nobody tells that side of the story where the money comes from, you know?

Technically, and it’s nobody’s frigging business. That’s right. You know, it’s nobody’s business.

How did you get so, I had somebody once asked me that. They came into the middle of one of my live broadcasts and said, how come you’re getting so many viewers on Twitch? I said, because I’m producing content.

He goes, yeah, but how do you know if this and this and this isn’t happening? I go, I can’t control that. I can’t, if somebody wants to do that, I can’t stop them from doing that, you know?

All I know is I’m putting my show out there and the viewer count is like this. You know, they were basically accusing me of jacking my numbers up. And I’m like, no, dude, you see me standing right here.

What am I, I’m not doing anything, you know? But I can’t, if a fan wants to go out there and do something to my show that I have no control over, I can’t control that, you know? That’s true.

So, and just haters come, haters go. Have a nice day. See you later.

You know, you don’t, once you put yourself in a mindset of not listening to them, go with what you know, you know? And then keep going forward. And they’ll, you’ll leave them in the dust.

You won’t hear from them anymore. And they’ll eventually fade away and fade out.

[Jim]
I had a person, this is when I was on Twitter, I’m not on Twitter anymore, that they thought they would make fun of me about being the Sherpa. And they were posting videos of a shepherd. It’s like, you’re trying to make fun of me, you can’t even get it right.

It’s like, who’s the idiot now?

[Darran]
Yeah, it comes. And that was my worst, my first fear was when I put Phantasmagoria on the air back in 2021. I was scared because my friend had a black, I’d never done this before to broadcast television.

Public access probably wasn’t too worried because you don’t, how many people were really watching public access? We had no Nielsen numbers, you can never prove. But with Nielsen numbers, you could, there’s 10,000 or more people watching at this time slot.

And it’s going state or Western Washington, Vancouver to Vancouver, mountains to mountains. And I was scared, I’m like, what happens if I get hate mail? What happens if I get somebody coming on board?

Because my host, my friend, good friend, he was black. I’m like, what if they send a hate mail to me? I was worried about that.

And really, I just said, get over it. Somebody sends something, and kind of goes to the same things with advertising. I tell clients now, if somebody said something, that means somebody was watching.

That means other people were watching. That’s a good sign. Getting hate mail is a good sign because somebody’s watching.

And all publicity is good publicity because they’re probably telling their friends, and they might have said, well, why are you picking on this guy? That was actually a cool episode. Thanks for turning me on to it, you know?

You know, so I mean, yeah, haters gonna hate and, you know, just keep doing what you’re gonna do. But I got a couple last questions here for you. I wanna know, not too long on this, but tell me about the career of Ted Bissell.

[Jim]
Who is Ted Bissell? Okay, in the 1960s, there was a TV show called, That Girl, Marlo Thomas, right? She actually married talk show host, Phil Donahue.

Okay. Now, if anybody’s under 40 right now, they’re probably going, I don’t know any of these people. So Ted Bissell played Marlo Thomas’s boyfriend on the show, Don Hollinger, okay?

And then after That Girl, he went on to do a show called Me and the Chimp. Where there was him and a monkey in the 1960s. And it was deemed like one of the worst TV shows ever.

And then he faded into obscurity after that. Well, as far as TV acting was concerned. I found out that he actually did some, like directing and producing.

He worked behind the scenes after being Donald Hollinger. And when I was in high school, there was a joke, like I would do a drama club and stuff like that. And the joke was, well, you could be the next Ted Bessel, you know?

So I’m thinking maybe I’m like the next Ted Bessel of podcasting.

[Darran]
You know, again, it’s getting through. Getting through the masses is what’s difficult. And, you know, even when you get celebrities on the show, it’s funny that they usually don’t share the show.

You know, so you’re like, I got to sit in an interview with this big name and you think it’s a big name and you think they might say something. You got to go back and do that due diligence to add those at mentions, add those hashtags. When you make those posts out there to Instagram, TikTok, because that’ll tag them in it.

A lot of people will go, oh yeah, I totally forgot about doing that interview with you. Thank you, I had a great time. You know, you kind of hit them up that way and they’re like, oh, or they might do a reshare, you know, on certain stuff.

But, you know, it’s very interesting. It’s again, how big you want it to be, set your expectations, set real expectations, set real attainable goals. Don’t get burnt out, keep going.

And, you know, keep, I mean, people, you’re crazy, you got to show, you keep talking about it all the time. The one thing that I’ve seen is, and this is big with influencer marketing or influencing people is follow the 80-20 rule, which is post 80% stuff that’s not about you, that’s content that’s relevant to, you know, like things you want to share and 20% about yourself. And that way people start looking at you as like, oh, this person is like, if somebody came to me and I started posting a bunch of stuff about electronic music that wasn’t about, look at me, look at me, look at Darren, look at Darren, look at Darren.

Yes, I post a lot about the DJ sessions, but it’s usually about interviews that I’ve done, news stories on our site, contests that we’re doing, you know, shows, exclusive mixes. It’s not look at Darren, look at Darren, look at Darren. Yes, I’m doing the interviews, but it’s 80% not about me.

You want my me, go to my personal DJ, go to my personal Facebook page or my personal Instagram, which I also share my DJ session stuff there as well. But, you know, you want to become known as a, not a contributor. What’s the term I’m looking for?

Not influencer. Oh, what’s it? That’s when you, I’m totally spacing on the term now, but a trusted source of information.

So when people post something, they know you’re talking about something and it’s a show that’s, you know, I can’t believe I’m totally, totally spacing on what that’s called right now. I’ll get it in a few moments, but long story short, they know you’re a trusted source and it isn’t just about me, me, me. And I think that’s a big mistake that a lot of podcasters make.

It’s kind of me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, especially if it’s just their talking head.

[Jim]
Yeah.

[Darran]
You know, they’re not bringing guests on or, you know, anyone can do current news and go to the AP wire and pull something off or just go to a local dumpster and pull something out of it if you know where I’m going with that.

[Jim]
It’s funny, when you were saying that, it reminded me of this show that I was listening to a number of years ago when I started listening to podcasts. And I know they had like a lot of the self-help people and all that stuff. And there was this woman that did one of the show and she never said the word you, she always said me, me.

And after a while, it was like, do you really understand what other people deal with? Why are you just saying how wonderful your life is and, you know, not really sharing, you know, engaging with like what other people might want to see? It was kind of sad.

[Darran]
Yeah. You know, and that’s where I usually kind of sit back and I let the guests, I mean, this is a different style of podcast that you wouldn’t know what I’m doing. Cause I’m interviewing a podcaster that does a podcast about podcasts.

Like looking in the mirror, the mirror, the mirror, the mirror. Very meta, very meta. You know, so a little bit different, but again, we like to reach out to different industries because there might be something that our guests might watch and say, I’m thinking about doing a podcast.

And in talking with Jim, I heard you talk about something that I’d never heard anyone ever talk about. And I’m like, oh, that’s cool. Jim might’ve mentioned something that I never, I never heard about that before.

I never thought about that and that was really relevant. So, you know, it’s kind of, yeah, you gotta, and it’s hard because people use fafar, a term that I learned a long time ago from Amway, friends, family, and relatives to base their, base the quality of their show, or they’re doing a good job. Well, friends, family, relatives says it’s awesome.

Have you put it out into the real world and gone swimming out there yet? Have you looked at what else is doing what? And maybe what you might need to just step up your game.

I mean, are you willing to spend 20 bucks a month to get Restream or Yardstream or StreamYard or whatever, to maybe have a nice little template layout and maybe dress it up a little bit more or pay Podbean. I’m not that many of these companies are endorsing these companies or getting paid by any of these companies, but to host your podcast, especially if it’s video, you know, rather than putting it to YouTube and having nine other commercials pop up when your YouTube video is done that takes people away from you. You know, and can you get a $5 a month GoDaddy website?

You know, and have instead of everything at yahoo, hotmail, gmail.com, it’s now at your domain name. And then, you know, did you buy podcasting for dummies for $34.95? You know, and read the book from beginning to finish.

You know, and did you submit your podcast to all the search engines? You know, all that fun stuff. Yeah, Jim, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show.

I know we’re gonna be a guest on your show here coming up and I’m super excited about that. Is there anything else you wanna let our DJ Sessions fans know before we let you go?

[Jim]
Yeah, I mean, the show really covers a lot of ground, a little bit of something for everybody, really, we feature with Podcast Picks with me. We do sections where we do true crime. We call that the true crime screen, we call it the true crime screening room.

When we talk to a lot of creators, like actors and singers, we have the Sherpa screening room. And of course we have, you know, when we’re talking about podcasts, we have the Podcast Picks. So there’s a lot of stuff to check out.

You know, sometimes we like to mix it up. You know, I haven’t really been doing as many with podcasts, but your episode is gonna be different. It’s gonna be called a listen to this because we’re gonna talk to you and we’re gonna actually feature one of your episodes.

So that everybody knows what your show is all about.

[Darran]
I got it, I got it. Everyone always asks me, what’s my favorite episode? What’s my most memorable?

What’s my most favorite episode? I’m like, every single one of them. You know, I mean, it’s cause I do this, I love doing this and it’s so fun that it’s hard for me just to pick a favorite.

Memorable, there’s a few. There’s some things that have never shone the light of day or we’ve ever put out there before too that would be memorable, but I would never air them. But yeah, where’s the best place for people to find out more information about you, what you got going on?

[Jim]
Okay, the podcast, Podcast Fix with Jim, the podcast show is on podcast apps all over the place. And I’m on YouTube at Sherpa Lucian. There it is, look right there.

That’s where you can find it. And there are audio versions. So you don’t get to see this face on video.

I know you’re lucky. So thank you, thank you. You’re welcome, you’re welcome.

I’m a nice guy that way. But yeah, those are probably the best things to do. And if you’re listening to the audio podcast, if you check the show notes in the link, there is a link to the website provided by my podcast provider.

[Darran]
Awesome. You can hear everything.

[Jim]
Who do you host with?

[Darran]
Who do you host with?

[Jim]
A cast.

[Darran]
A cast, all right. We’ll talk about that off camera. I’m always out there looking for other options and things like that.

So Jim, it’s been a pleasure to having you on the show. I’m going to go for that. I’m going to go one last thing.

I’m going to try this out. Penzarone, am I even close? Yeah, you’re pretty close.

Go ahead. Jim, how do you say your last name exactly?

[Jim]
I say the podcast Sherpa.

[Darran]
Yeah, the podcast Sherpa, Jim the podcast Sherpa. There we go. All right, that was easy enough.

All right. Thank you so much for coming on the DJ Sessions this evening. Thanks so much, Darren.

Absolutely. On that note, don’t forget to go to our website, thedjsessions.com. Find us on all the socials.

All the links are there. Check out our news stories. We got over 650 news stories a month that go up to our website.

We have over 60 hours plus content coming to you every month starting back up here this month, including this episode with Jim the podcast Sherpa. And also go to our music store. We just launched a new music store.

We have our Sightwide Music Flair, all of that and more. And our store, you can get clothes, donate to the show at thedjsessions.com. Go check it out, thedjsessions.com.

2,600 past episodes and more at thedjsessions.com. I’m Darren, that’s Jim coming to you from New York. I’m coming to you from the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington.

And remember on the DJ Sessions, the music never stops.