James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday the 2nd of December, 2022. The last word in podcasting news. This is the POD News Weekly review with James Cridlin and Sam Sethi. I'm James Cridlin, the editor of Pod News.

Sam Sethi: 0:16

And I'm Sam Sethi, the host of Sam Talks

James Cridland: 0:18

Technology. In the chapters today, Samsung Free adds a new feature that messes up stats for everyone. More about Apple Podcast's, automated topics with Dan Meisner, and we're joined by podcaster Trevor Bell to talk about micro payments and value for value.

Sam Sethi: 0:33

This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzz Sprout. Last week, 3,615 lovely people started a podcast with Buzz Sprout. Buzz Sprout hosting made easy with powerful tools and remarkable customer

James Cridland: 0:46

support from your daily newsletter, the Pod New weekly review.

Sam Sethi: 0:51

But first, let's get on with the news, James, Samsung free question. Hmm. What's this all about? Millions of automated downloads, uh, what is going on with Samsung James? Yes.

James Cridland: 1:02

Well, so this is a, an app which is. All Samsung phones. So Samsung is the number one in terms of Android, um, phones and Samsung Free is there, and it includes a podcast player and various other things. Now, what they started doing last week is that they rolled out a new version of their app, which when you hit the listen tab in the app, automatically it starts playing you podcasts. It thinks you might like. Which is great, but unfortunately what that's essentially done is lots and lots and lots of, uh, extra traffic for podcast hosts and for podcasts. And you might think that that's a very good thing. But it does look as if, um, they're listening to a podcast for about 20 or 30 seconds and then going, no, I don't want to do this. I just wanted to listen to the podcast that I wanted to listen to. Um, so Samsung, um, not, not probably doing things the right way. Now they've basically said that they are going to fix their podcast app, which is all very exciting. Um, but unfortunately because they haven't set a user agent, It makes it very difficult for podcast hosting companies to be able to block this traffic without blocking other traffic as well. So it's been quite entertaining watching how some of the podcast hosting companies have ended up, uh, dealing with this. Um, because the same user agent is being used, uh, for Google News, his audio player, for example, podcast Addict sometimes uses it depending on how you're listening to a podcast. Also, uh, the podcast at Ghana from. India that also uses this particular user agent. So it's another one of those things around downloads, or do we want better data, really? Uh, Sam, do, do you think we are gonna be sticking with downloads forever? No,

Sam Sethi: 2:49

I don't think we are at all. Um, hopefully we will transpire over to the streaming thing. I have a new app coming out and it is purely only streaming and it is much Sorry, wait, stop.

James Cridland: 3:00

You have a new app coming out? You've, you've not mentioned this before?

Sam Sethi: 3:03

I have a new app, yes, James. Uh, but I can't talk about it much. Oh, but you have seen it apart

James Cridland: 3:08

from the fact that it's a new app. That's very exciting. I have seen it, yes, I have seen it. But you've not, you've not mentioned it here. You can't, you can't just, you can't just, you know, throw Oh, you know, my new app that's coming soon. Uh, and then carry on talking. You . I've tried.

Sam Sethi: 3:23

I I tried and failed. Clearly . Um, but yes, it, it's based on streaming and, uh, you know, that. Is much better for I think, the data that we are trying to produce out of it. So yeah, I don't think download is gonna be a long term, uh, industry standard, hopefully.

James Cridland: 3:39

Yeah, indeed. I think one of the interesting things around this is that because Samsung hasn't set a proper user agent on this, Um, that's bad and, and apparently some podcast hosting companies have just blocked it, so you can't even download shows at the moment using that particular, uh, user agent, which has, uh, ended up blocking a couple of other apps that are also too lazy. Basically it's using a, a user agent called Delve. Delve is, um, the equivalent of Apple core media. It's the lazy user agent for lazy developers that can't be bothered to set their own user agent. That's basically what that is. Um, and yes, and so it's, it's going to be, uh, interesting, um, because uh, a lot of people have been caught in the crossfire there and it just goes to show if you're building a podcast app and it's a proper podcast app, then make sure that it has a user agent. Cuz otherwise bad things might happen such as this. Yes. We

Sam Sethi: 4:38

won't be using Del, I promise you that, um, in. In the meantime, uh, a casters, uh, demonetize listens coming from the Delphic user agent to protect our advertisers. They say, yeah, James, why? How, what? Go

James Cridland: 4:53

on. Well, I think, I think this is the, this is very clever from a cast. What they've basically said is, we know that quite a lot of these downloads are going to be automated. They haven't been asked for by a listener, so therefore, we're still going to. You know, get the, the podcast out there. But we are not going to put advertising in there because we are not convinced that people are going to hear the ads that get put into these shows. And I think that that's a really good idea and I think that that's probably the right way to be looking at this. Um, what Acast have also noted though is that under IAB guidelines, these lessons are considered valid. So they're actually official lessons just the same way as if you buy, um, a podcast play in subway surfers to gain an extra life, uh, which is also obviously nonsense. Um, again, the IB seems to reckon that all of this is all just fine, uh, under their guidelines, and I just wonder. On Earth is the use of the iab. If it's, um, if it's basically allowing anyone to do anything with podcast

Sam Sethi: 5:57

downloads, well, for 25,000 pounds a year, I'd, I'd just let anything go through as well. Maybe, James Cridland: I think it's yes, I, I I know what you mean. Uh, talking of acast, they've done something, uh, entertaining, haven't they? Yeah. They're encouraging the use of visual descriptions in podcasts to make content more accessible for blind or low visioned people. And I think that's a really good thing to do. Well done. Aco.

James Cridland: 6:19

Yeah, I think visual descriptions is a good idea. So, um, when I listened to, uh, I want to call her Cath bu because that's her Twitter handle and I can't remember her, her full name, Kath.

Sam Sethi: 6:30

Oh, yes. Um,

James Cridland: 6:31

Catherine Ryan. Yes. That one. Yes. Uh, she ended up doing a visual. Description of what she looked like and somebody else did a visual description of what they looked like. Uh, obviously, uh, this just lends itself to comedy, doesn't it? Um, uh, but, uh, but still, there we are. In case you wondered, I'm six foot two. Uh, I'm, I, I've, I've got graying hair and amazingly

Sam Sethi: 6:55

handsome. No, but the good thing that a cast is doing, they're using a W three C standard, which is, um, available. So I'll put a link in the show notes. But again, you know, all of this is very helpful. But again, one thing I'm gonna say and we're gonna moan about is not many people support the transcript tag yet, so, How are they going to take the time to also add visual descriptions to podcasts if they can't be bothered to add transcripts and chapters and other bits of information that is metadata that helps people as well? It is,

James Cridland: 7:30

yeah. And I, I think a transcript would be so super useful and I'm really surprised that it hasn't taken off as much as it could have done, given that, of course, you know, the, the transcript, you know, there are lots of transcripts being, uh, built and also it's a really quick and easy win. And, uh, if apple, as Apple professes an awful lot to be accessible and to make sure that all of its technology is accessible to everybody else. Why Apple hasn't supported it, I don't really know, but still, but there we are. So it'll be, uh, interesting to see where they go, uh, from

Sam Sethi: 8:05

there. Talking of Apple, uh, um, we have done for the last couple of weeks cuz friend of the show, Dan Meisner from Bumper found, uh, some, I suppose hidden, uh, metadata within podcasts from Apple. Uh, he was doing a little surf around in Safari, he told us. And uh, James, you, you had a little look at this as well. What did Dan find,

James Cridland: 8:28

first of all? Yeah, so I had a look at this as a, uh, very clever, um, uh, piece of work that Apple have been doing to basically go in and work out. People are talking about in their, uh, podcasts, not just that, but actually link that to the wiki data list of topics and places and things, uh, which is all very clever. And, um, I ended up writing a little topics viewer after Dan had, um, pointed out how you could get them. I ended up writing a little topics viewer so you could actually see all of those topics in your, in your browser. And that appeared to work, you know, really quite nicely. Um, but, uh, he's been doing more, hasn't he?

Sam Sethi: 9:05

Sam? Yeah, he's been creating Spider networks, which is based on some of the work he, uh, did previously about neighborhoods. Um, and I thought I'd reach out to him now before, uh, you listened to the interview. I also highly recommend listening to Buzz Sprouts Buzz Cast from last week, Kevin and Alban. Um, did a great job last week of talking about this as well, which prompted me to go out and reach out to down because I wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth. So I first asked Dan Ma, now what is Apple doing? So Apple

Dan Misener: 9:37

Podcasts, the app and directory is something you can see from a number of different vantage points. You could be on a Mac and you could open up the Apple Podcasts app. You could be on an iOS device, and you could open up the Apple Podcasts app on an iPhone or an iPad. And in addition to those apps, apple Podcasts and the directory that is a part of that service also has webpages. So for nearly every series and nearly every episode that is available through Apple Podcasts, there's a corresponding webpage and you don't need to be on an Apple platform in order to view these. You just need a web browser. And there's a lot of interesting stuff on those episode webpages or those series level webpages and. Much of the most interesting stuff is not visible on the page. In order to get to the interesting stuff, sometimes you have to be in your browser and you right click and view source, you open up the web inspector, right? And in fact, apple makes a wonderful web browser called Safari that has tools built in to do exactly this, right? They're typically used by web developers, right? And so in alongside all of the stuff that you might expect to see on an episode webpage, things like the episode title, the episode description, the duration of the episode, all those very common metadata elements. I noticed something unusual one day a couple of weeks ago as I was poking around these episodic web pages. I saw a list of topics and the topic seemed a little too good to have been. based purely on the episode title or based purely on the episode description. In fact, many of the topics that I was seeing didn't appear anywhere in the written metadata that a creator would enter into their podcast hosting platform as they published their show. And so my best guess is that these topics, which are invisible to anybody viewing the actual rendered page in their web browser, but our just under the surface, hiding in plain sight, my best guess is that Apple is using their speech technologies to Auto transcribe or Robo Transcribe episodes, which is something that we've known they've been doing for a while now. My best guess is they're auto transcribing. Episodes listening to the spoken word that appears inside episodes, and then using various natural language processing techniques to extract topics so that you might have a list of topics that reference people or places or events that weren't explicitly mentioned in the episode. Title weren't explicitly mentioned in the episode notes, but were mentioned by a human being using their voice. And so I cannot confirm for certain that that's what's going on, but my very best guess is that Apple is listening to many podcast episodes, doing its best robo transcription. And then from those robo transcriptions, extracting topics and tagging individual episodes with those

Sam Sethi: 13:20

topics with what aim. In mind,

Dan Misener: 13:25

you'd have to ask Apple. I think there are a lot of really obvious ways that you could use this data, right? I think one of them is search and discovery, and I've seen evidence that Apple is using these topics to aid their search function. For example, you can type a keyword or a search phrase into the Apple Podcast's apps on iOS or on a Mac, and you will see episodes surfaced there that don't have that search phrase anywhere in their written metadata, but do have those search phrases appear in this otherwise invisible topic list. So search and being able to dig deeper into episodes through this use of sort of structured data that is. Opportunity. I think James Cridland has also pointed out that this may be in an attempt to identify topics that could or should be flagged, right? Covid misinformation I think is a pretty obvious example and we've seen how Spotify has been trying to do the same thing to tag episodes or to add flags to episodes that may contain misinformation. So those are two things that, that you could use, but I think that's just scratching the surface cuz really what's going on underlying all of this is Apple is assigning these topics and not only are they assigning them topics, many of these topics are associated with the structured data that's being pulled from Wiki data, which is one of the underlying pieces that props. Wikipedia and many of these other projects. And so I think at, at a really, really high level, this to me represents Apple taking the wild and wooly world of spoken word audio, which has little or no structure to it and applying some kind of structured data to it. You might call it a knowledge graph. I think Google is pretty famous for having built out search along knowledge graph lines. Social networks obviously use graphs of various kinds, and so yes, search, yes, maybe flagging episodes that should require a little bit of extra attention or a little extra research, but also lots of really interesting things that you can do once audio becomes. A bit more structured. So can we put together playlists based on topics? Can we explore the back catalog of a show that has a very deep back catalog? Not by scrolling through episode titles and hoping that you can find what you're looking for, but in fact exploring them through topics that were mentioned, guests that appeared, all those kinds of things.

Sam Sethi: 16:22

And you did something fascinating with the data. I know James on Pod News has created a UI that allows you to put in the name of a podcast. Yeah. And if Apple has actually indexed it and robo transcribed it, then you can actually see some of that metadata. But you also put something together, I think you called them Spider Networks. Can you tell me more about that?

Dan Misener: 16:43

Yeah. This is a technique, a way of displaying information that's commonly referred to as a network graph. And network graphs look a little bit like spiderwebs, or they look a little bit like galaxies that have exploded. Essentially, network graphs are a way to look at the relationships between various entities and by looking at the relationships, identify patterns in the relationships. So lots of ways you can apply network graphs. And what I did with the topic data was for every single category in Apple Podcasts, I got a list of the most popular episodes in that category. And then for each and every one of those popular or charting episodes, I extracted all of the topics and then Drew lines connecting episodes that. Connected by topics they had in common, which is a very complicated way to draw a map, but ends up being really useful because effectively you can look at a category in Apple podcasts. Maybe it's basketball, maybe it's parenting, maybe it's business, and you can identify of the shows that have episodes that are on the charts, what are the topics being discussed there? And so in that sense, you can basically identify what are the trending topics. If the top episodes in every category are some representation of what's hot or what are people listening to in this particular moment or in the very recent past, it's a way of getting at what's buzz. Not just what shows or what episodes are buzzy, but what's being discussed on these episodes, which can be a really useful way to look at a large category and identify opportunities to cover particular topics or counterprogram and find something else to talk about if maybe there's some saturation going

Sam Sethi: 18:48

on. Yeah, I talked briefly last week on Pod News Weekly about the idea of a transcription. Tag cloud, right? Yeah. Just for one episode and, and wait it based on the size of the tag. Yeah. But you are talking about doing that across the whole of a category. Yes. So it's really looking at that whole spectrum and then aggregating that all together. What did you discover anything new or, or was it obvious as in, oh yeah, that's Joe Rogan still number one, and yeah, we all get what this is going on. I mean, was there anything that came out of it after all that hard

Dan Misener: 19:20

work? So one of the things that we've been doing at Bumper is working with individual podcast producers and some networks, and we've been using this topic data in a couple different ways. One really obvious and easily actionable way to do this is if you are a show with a deep back catalog, maybe you've got hundreds or thousands of episodes in your back catalog, and bumper is actively working with shows that have deep, deep, deep back catalogs. Sometimes you forget. What's in that back catalog? What episode was the episode where we talked about backyard chicken farming? Or what was the episode where we talked about why bananas taste different in 2022 versus 1982? You know, those kinds of questions. I just can't remember what's in my back catalog. Or maybe I've got a really deep back catalog and there's still a lot of value there. Maybe we should resurface some of those episodes. Maybe we could repackage them. Maybe we could put together a playlist. You know, those kinds of things. Where's the backyard chicken? Farming episode of, you know, could we make a playlist all about chickens? That kind of thing, right? And so we've been taking these shows and essentially running Apple Podcasts, topic audits. And what that can yield is here's a giant list of all of your episodes. Here's a list of topics that Apple thinks your episodes are about. And you can run that in both directions. So you could say, not only what does Apple think my episodes are about, but much like the index of a printed book where you can flip to the end and find all the places that a particular topic was mentioned. We could say we want to do a chicken and poultry playlist from my 2000 episodes. Show me all the episodes where we mentioned chicken or poultry. And then you can build a playlist. You could remarket those episodes and you know, once a year when it's Chicken and Poultry Week, international Chicken and Poultry Week, a. Suddenly you've got an opportunity to resurface something from your back catalog. So that's one of the ways that we've been thinking about this is just deeper insights into your back catalog to identify opportunities to market or remarket those episodes.

Sam Sethi: 21:37

Yeah, I mean, again, I'm fascinated by how we can now start to look at podcasts and dig underneath the, just the audio and find some structure in it. The other thing I was wondering what your thought was was, Siri, I know this sounds really odd, but do you wonder that Apple upload doing this to make Siri more intelligent with podcasting?

Dan Misener: 22:01

It's a great question. I have no special insight into Apple's roadmap for their speech technologies. But I would be surprised if there wasn't some overlap between the people who are building one speech technology inside Apple and. A group of people who might have access to a very, very, very large set of data around what's actually being said. I think it's interesting to think about the way that these automatic transcriptions, and we know that a number of the platforms have been doing robo transcriptions for a while, what that does to the amount of control that individual podcasters have over how their shows are surfaced, how their episodes might appear in search. Cuz I think traditionally, you know, much of what I've thought about when it comes to podcast SEO has been about the words that I type into a box. Do I have a well written episode title? Do I have for a platform like Google Podcast that actually does index episode descriptions? Have I put all of the names of all of my guests and all of the relevant links? Like I've thought about audio SEO traditionally from a, what words have I typed into a box perspective? And I think what's changing with the popularization of these robo transcripts and now these derivative topics coming from Apple, what's changing is that a lot of how your show might or might not be found isn't directly within your control as a podcaster, right? If Apple has mistranscribed my episode, and as a consequence miscategorized it or mis tagged it with a topic that is either incorrect or wrong or misleading, what's my recourse? I as an individual, Publisher or as a podcaster, as a creator, how do I go fix that? It's not like a typo in my episode notes , where I can go and fix the typo and then wait a couple hours to see that propagated across the internet. No, I, I, I don't know. Am I supposed to get in touch with Apple to talk to them about the topics that, do you have a number their, their system has? Yeah., right? And so, so I think it, it's an interesting thing to think about as less direct control over shows becomes the reality for many publishers.

Sam Sethi: 24:34

Yeah, I think it does open up, you know, how do chance get made recommendations? Where do you sit in it? One last question really, Dan, in your analysis, did you find that Apple were focusing more on shows that are in the subscription model for Apple and Less in the Free to Listen model?

Dan Misener: 24:54

It's a great question. I haven't split those numbers apart. I haven't looked closely at that, but maybe I should. I did notice that there seems to be quite a correlation between the existence of topics, cuz not all episodes have a topic assigned to them. There's a correlation between chart appearances and the existence of those topics. The vast majority of episodes that are on the popular charts, at least in those top level categories, have topics assigned to them. All the big shows, the high volume shows that you might expect to have topics assigned to them, have topics assigned to them. But especially over the past couple of days, I've heard from some smaller independent podcasters, passion podcasters, hobbyist podcasters who want to know what does Apple think my show is about? And.. The truth is Apple has not tagged any of their episodes with any topics, so I haven't done a deep dive into subscription paid options versus free to listen options. But there definitely seems to be more topics assigned to episodes that come from existing popular shows and smaller shows that maybe haven't passed a certain threshold of, I don't know what the metric would be, but smaller shows that are just not big enough to be robo transcribed or not big enough to be, uh, robo transcribed and then tagged with topics, uh, they, they may find themselves at, uh, a search disadvantage if in fact everything we've been talking about is indeed.

Sam Sethi: 26:33

So last question, bumper is formed to help podcasts grow. Would you launch a tool that would allow people who are podcasters to therefore populate their metadata with a new category called topics? Because strangely, in the RSS feed, you have categories which are horribly, horribly limited. Apple, if you're listening, please let us change them for Christ's sake. It's not 1990 still, but so the categories are limiting. Keyword stuffing is not now seen as a good thing to do. And if topics is the new thing on the block that Apple are looking at, I guess I go back to the question, would you release a tool that would a, like James has done, help people view what topics Apple sees within their metadata? And B, is there a way of altering those topics once you know what topic you think you've got? Yeah, that Apple could then go, oh, actually we thought you were pineapples, but you're oranges.

Dan Misener: 27:35

Yeah. I mean, the question about whether Apple will let anyone change the topics that their system has assigned, that's obviously a question for Apple. Can't speak to that. I didn't want to talk about it. Strangely, , and as for the tool, yeah. Bumper right now has a, we call it an Apple Podcast's topic audit tool. And so given the name of a show or the name of one of apple's, roughly 110 categories, we can take a single show and run a report on it and give to our clients. Here are all of the episodes that Apple has tagged with topics, and here's what Apple thinks your episodes are about. The inverse of that, which is. Here's the index to your podcast. So all of the episodes grouped together by topic and those maps that you mentioned, those sort of spider maps we're building those right now for clients today. So yeah, we do have a tool and right now it's something that clients a bumper get access to and we get to use. Whether that'll become available to more people depends on the, the demand and it depends on and relies upon the continued availability of this topic data because Apple could and maybe will shut that off at some point in the future. And I certainly wouldn't wanna put a whole lot of time into a tool that could suddenly disappear overnight.

Sam Sethi: 29:00

Sure. Zach, Ted, if you're listening, reveal all now. Hurry up. We need to know Dan, thank you so much. Thank you for your insight. Before you go, please tell everyone where they can find more about you and Bumper please.

Dan Misener: 29:14

Thanks for having me. Sam Bumper is a podcast growth agency. We have a blog. We have a newsletter where we write about stuff like this. And you can find us@wearebumper.com.

James Cridland: 29:26

Dan Meisner from bumper. Uh, we are bumper.com is where to find, uh, more information on that. Very, very cool. And uh, he also has the radio voice, has he not Sam?

Sam Sethi: 29:35

He does. I was learning everything about it. I haven't got one yet., when I find it, I'll let you know.

James Cridland: 29:40

Hey, there was a piece of, uh, history that we ended up, uh, uncovering, uh, this week in the pod news newsletter.

Sam Sethi: 29:47

Yeah. You, Adam Curry's original blog post. Now, you had talked about this, uh, a long while ago. Uh, and unfortunately it seemed that Dave Wener had turned off his server and we thought. Original blog post of which was a piece of history had been lost, but seems, is been found again. James. Yes.

James Cridland: 30:10

Uh, it was lost, but now it's found. Uh, so this was the blog poster. We thought it was called The Last Mile, or at least that's what Eric Newsome, who's been researching all of this thought it was called, it turns out it was called The Last Yard because you know, Americans. And, uh, it was the blog post that turned into a meeting with Dave Wener, which then turned into podcasting. Basically, it was Adam Curry's original idea for talking about always on. Uh, computers that would download stuff overnight so that the show was ready for you when you wanted the show to be ready. Um, a uh, a really sort of historical document. And, um, Adam actually found it. He was playing around in the web archive and ended up finding that particular, uh, thing. So now of course it's all over everywhere, uh, and very good. It is too. Um, so, uh, the last yard is worth, uh, a read. It's quite fascinating. It even includes smile, by the way. I dunno whether you notice that. It includes, uh, talking about smile and talking about, um, taking individual bits of shows and, uh, and assembling them together at the computer. Uh, End, which of course is what, uh, the BBC is doing with their adaptive podcasting. So what goes around comes around. Um, but, uh, yeah, that, that's certainly there. And to celebrate that, um, we have, uh, a little bit of, um, uh, of, of documentary, uh, in the pod news extra, uh, feed. If you go and, uh, download that, you will find that there's a little documentary of the history and the early days of podcasting with lots of clips and stuff. I dunno if you had a listen, uh, to that, Sam. I

Sam Sethi: 31:46

did. Yes I did. I was down the gym and I thought I'd have a listen. James, I had to take my hat off to you that the production on that was really good, by the way. You very much. I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much. It was, uh, yeah, no, it's worth a, it's worth a listen. Dystopia is a service that. Came across a little while back, it's, uh, a way of playing music. It's another music streaming service, but they've done something this week. They've integrated with Albe, uh, for value, for value payments. The tool enables you to pay what you want, uh, at the time. So it's a good thing. I think I did have a look and I did speak to Michael, actually, Michael Boomy over at Alby about this, and they've integrated it through the plugin and they've used the metatag in the header to allow it, to detect that the user is using the Albi plugin. So that what you have to do is simply go to the site, find the track you want, and then the plugin will say, how much do you wanna pay? And you use the plugin to actually make the payment. Ah,

James Cridland: 32:46

okay. So this is, uh, so is this for the music stuff, not their podcasting stuff, or can you use it for both? You can use it for both, I believe, yes. Okay. Oh, well that's interesting and interesting that you mentioned value for value because. I was at the Brisbane Podcaster's Meetup last Friday night. Imagine a lovely warm day. We are next to the beach. Uh, the center of Brisbane has a beach. I know. And, uh, there I was in my, uh, you know, just in my shirt because it was a lovely, lovely warm day.

Sam Sethi: 33:16

Thank God

James Cridland: 33:17

you didn't say Speedos. I, I'm , not quite, I only say this because I'm looking outside and where I am in Brisbane at least it's pelting it down with rain and it's miserable and it's, and it's cold and it's the first day of summer, uh, and it's no good. And I bumped into, uh, somebody else who's in Brisbane, uh, Trevor Bell, who does a podcast called The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove. It's a weekly Australian podcast about news, politics, and changes in our society. Trevor, is it raining where you are as well, given

Trevor Bell: 33:49

that I'm about a sort of 10 or 15 minute walk from your house, James? Yes, it is. Yes,. James Cridland: Yes it is. Um, so have, have I got that right about your, uh, podcast? Yes. We talk about news and politics and sex and religion, all the things that you're not supposed to talk about at a dinner party,, that's the sort of catchphrase

James Cridland: 34:09

for it. That's nice. Have you ever been de platformed from any of these, uh, indexes yet? No, I haven't.

Trevor Bell: 34:15

In fact, I find, you know, it is a bit of a story you hear that you wouldn't talk about news and politics and sex and religion, you know, in, um, in company at a dinner party. But I do it all the time and people really enjoy it, like they get

James Cridland: 34:28

into it. Now you do that show live, don't you? And, and you do that show in front of, uh, in front of cameras and everything else. I think you've, you've, you've turned on the, the lights and everything for us. Um, but we are most definitely not doing this on cameras, nor do we do it live. Why, why do you do that show live? Yeah.

Trevor Bell: 34:44

Well, I've been doing the podcast for about seven years, uh, weekly, uh, every Tuesday and. After about the first two years, I think we started doing the, the, uh, livestream, and I find that it, you get feedback so people, because we do it regularly, same time, same uh, night, people know that we are there. They tune in. We get maybe anywhere between 10 and 20 people. Mm-hmm. turn up, uh, we have a chat room so they can write their comments. If they're on Facebook, Facebook or YouTube or Twitch, then their comments will appear on the screen in a sort of a rolling ticket tape sort of thing. And. Well, you know, as you're doing the podcast, you feel like you've got a room full of people that you are dealing with. You're getting instant feedback and a sense of community has developed over time. Now we

James Cridland: 35:37

do feedback, of course, using Booster Grahams and stuff like that. But you were having an animated conversation with Kyron from the Mere Mortals podcast at the Brisbane Podcasters Meetup. What were you talking about? Why were you so animated? Well, you

Trevor Bell: 35:51

know, I listen to a lot of podcasts about podcasts, so I listen to your weekly podcasts. I listen to, uh, new media show. I listen to podcasting 2.0. I've tuned into Chiron's different podcasts. So, and I've just found over the last couple of months that. All of these experts, and I'm looking at you, James, have become quite obsessed with the idea of Satoshis and booster grams and monetizing a podcast. Using that means, and I sort of have found myself almost shouting at the microphone saying the alternatives are a lot better and it's criminal to be pushing one form of payment, which is probably one of the worst forms. And really, if you are trying to help out podcasters, I think you should be steering them to the alternatives. You know, I realize I'm almost committing. Podcast casting Blas for me here and you know, given the author of all this is, you know, Adam Curry, I'm Genuflecting as I say the name, you know, I'm going against the grain here, but I think a few people would agree with me. It's, it's time to stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Take a cold shower and look at the alternatives.

Dan Misener: 37:12

James, when, tell

Sam Sethi: 37:13

me what I could jump in. Dan Misener: You can, you can,

James Cridland: 37:16

you can jump in. Now. It's time for you to stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Sam, now

Sam Sethi: 37:21

you are right there. There has been a very strong push by certain members of the podcast community towards value, for value and Satoshi's. Value for value, let's separate that first. Doesn't require Satoshi's. Value for value can include Paton, it can include any other form of payments. So, uh, Satoshi is just one of those forms. Let's address Satoshi's directly. The problem with Satoshi's is that, It is complex right now. Like most technologies that are in the embryonic phase, you get that complexity. A famous Australian Edward DeBono said Once complexity has failed simplicity. And that's where we are right now. Now I go back to my days in Netscape. I remember having to teach people about loading T C P I P, finding a browser, explaining what HTTP was, what was a url, how the hell do you put www, followed by something. There was no search engine. That is now second nature to everyone, and I think you'll find Trevor in probably less than six months, you will see people going, oh yeah, just pay me in stats. What's your lightning address? That's easy. Here's my

James Cridland: 38:33

wallet. Trevor. Is it all about complexity or, or is there something else involved?

Trevor Bell: 38:37

No, that's not the biggest problem. So first of all, the biggest problem is most people don't own Bitcoin or SOTA to give to a podcaster. So, You know, have you guys looked at the statistics of how many people actually own Bitcoin? Yes.

James Cridland: 38:53

It's not massive is it? But you know, I think we can probably help them and not, not very many people. When I go to the local school fate, not very many people own the fairground tokens, uh, that you buy as you go in, but people buy them as you go in and then everybody owns them. So I suppose you've got that, but you, you were also saying about the relative size of the, uh, you know, of a booster ground versus what you get from a, cuz you, you monetize through something like Paton, don't you? Correct. So

Trevor Bell: 39:24

first of all, just, you know, cycling back to what I was gonna say. In Australia, only 5% of people own any cryptocurrency. And so the percentage that have Bitcoin would be even less. And the other part, I mean, in the United States it's just 16. So it's a really low take up. But the other point was that I mentioned was, you know, I, I hear these boosts and, you know, row of ducks 2, 2 22, thanks very much for your, for your contribution. But when you stop and you think, well, how much is that? And it might only be 25 cents or 30 cents. So, you know, you've got the situation where people are making really small payments and almost an expectation that has developed a sort of a culture that's come with booster grams that they're all read out and all acknowledged as well. So, I mean, you don't have to, you could just accept them and not do that. But part of the culture that's come with, with the booster grams is, is this automatic thank yous that just keep dragging on. I mean, sometimes for half an hour, I, I think I'd rather listen to a three minute zip recruiter ad than 30 minutes of, of Boostgram thank yous But the really big one, James, is, is in terms of regular payments. So, I've got, look, it's a very small podcast, maybe downloads 400, 500 an episode, but I've got about 50 people signed up in Patreon who are paying on average $2 US each. So I get about a hundred dollars and every time I publish an episode and click the button, then I get that money and I don't have to worry next week. I can tell you now within a dollar how much I'm gonna earn on Tuesday night when I do my next podcast. It's not gonna fluctuate wildly. And you know, I've got, uh, lots of, I wouldn't say lots, but I just had a conversation just the other day with a, with a, with a patron who admitted he hadn't listened to a podcast for three months cuz he'd been off the grid and doing other things, hadn't had time. He was more than happy to pay me the $2 an episode cuz he thought I was doing a good job and he wanted to support me. So the regular payment that is available through say Patreon or a regular PayPal donation or. A private RSS feed. I don't see that as being easily available through the Satoshi system at the moment, and, and

Sam Sethi: 41:48

eventually it might be. Okay. Trevor, again, Satoshi is a payment mechanism, and I get what you're saying, Trevor. I'm not, I'm not naive to the fact that how many people have got it, but if. Twitter from what we've seen last week from Elon Musk, does turn on the micro payments, which are built into, um, Twitter today. Jack left it as a little Easter egg that will be 300 million people with a wallet using Satoshi payments to actually instead of harting or liking or thumbs up, being able to give actually micro payments. But all I can say to you is I've got an app coming out, I can't tell you what it's called, but I've done a deep dive with AL'S api. So in real time when you join, you get a wallet given to you. You don't need to understand that you get paid sat for joining because that's part of the process of onboarding. So in your wallet you'll have a thousand sat and at that point you've got a little bit of funny money if you wanna call it that to play with, to reward people to give money to your favorite creators or to leave a booster grab. And it's a learning process. And that's where I think we we're at. But I think what we're trying to do. Is get a problem on the internet, not just for podcasting fixed. And that is micro payments is a mechanism that we need on the internet in order to reward not just podcasters, but many other ways. Because paying 3% or 4% transaction fees, every time you make a PayPal or a Stripe payment or a credit card payment doesn't allow for micropayments. So we can't do little gestures of sentiment towards creators that will allow them to say, well done. I really like what you did that tweet that medium post that podcast. See? So I think all I'm saying is it's just a timed thing. Just bear with it. It will be the right thing

Trevor Bell: 43:42

to do. See, I'm not saying people don't offer it as a means of payment, but offer the others as well in terms of a PayPal account, a Patreon account. you would probably want to preference your listeners into one of the others rather than the Satoshis. I mean, if I say for example, I've got a listener at the moment who's paying me $2 an episode through, through Patreon, and they said to me, Trevor, I'm willing to swap over to the Satoshi system. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to do that or not? I'd say, no, stay where you are, because I know even when they don't listen to an episode, they're going to pay when they're busy or whatever they're going to pay. If they don't listen to the whole episode, I'll still get the whole $2. You know, as a, as a listener myself, if I wanna support a podcast, I really like the idea of a set and forget. I know what I'm getting from Pod News Weekly, for example, and what you guys are gonna present. So I could just go, you know what? I think that's worth X amount. Push a button and it's done. And I sit back. And know that I'm supporting you without having to listen and do

James Cridland: 44:56

anything else. I think there are two things that I'm, I'm getting out of this conversation. One thing is, and by the way, you don't get the, the $2 from your Patriot. You get, you, you get the$1 80, whatever it is, $1 60 after Pat has taken their money and after Stripe has taken their, their money. But, you know, arguably that's more than you might have got from a Boostgram. But on the other side, I think what, what's really interesting is that idea of a weekly or a monthly payment that is just automatic. And we don't have that, do we, Sam, in sat. We don't have an automatic, regardless of whether or not you've actually listened to the podcast, we, we don't have an automatic, um, take a hundred thousand sat outta my wallet every single month. And I wonder whether that's something that we might build in as a, you know, a monthly. Um, you know, as well, it's

Sam Sethi: 45:46

possible, I think, I suppose a recurring payment when I'm not listening doesn't seem to me that, um, I'm getting value or unless you are saying, you know, and, and I'm open to the conversation that, you know, even though I don't listen, I still appreciate the fact that you've produced something and I wanna support you. Um, and that's the value I want to give. So there are maybe arguments for that. I don't know, I haven't thought it through enough.

Trevor Bell: 46:11

The, the other systems also allow you to have, um, communication with your supporters. You get an email list created in pat, or you can extract it from, you know, PayPal or whatever. So you can also talk to the people who are your supporters in a, in an easy fashion. It's, it's very easy to do. So there's that aspect of, of it. There's also a real gender imbalance with ownership of cryptocurrency, like, It's, it's a very male dominated ownership. So in the US it's 22% of men have some crypto, but only 10% of women. So again, if you've got a, um, a podcast that's maybe looking at, um, true crime and your main listener base is female, then you, you really. You, you've got a payment system that's not directed at your main clientele. And, and

Sam Sethi: 47:08

today that's true. And, and I, I wouldn't disagree with you, Trevor, on that today, that is a hundred percent true, but like all technologies that take their time to get, uh, evolved and then go mainstream. So let me give you one last example, Trevor. Uh, I did a bit of math, uh, and just looking at it, it was very simple as a streaming sat. If I was paying a hundred SATs per minute, which is very, very little, it's 0.0. Pence in UK or or 1 cent. Um, but I said, that's what I wanted to pay you for value. For value while listening to your podcast. And if you had a 50 minute podcast, that would be about 5,000 sat. So 5,000 SAT is 71 p. Now, if you could broadcast that or publish that in advance, say, look, hey, if you wanna listen to my podcast, it's just 71 p. Most people go, yeah, actually I get a lot of value out of that. I know that translation cuz you put it on the screen, you don't just leave it as a SAT number. I can, I can equate 5,000. It sounds a lot, but 71 p I can understand that currency. Got it. I'll pay you that. You make that payment. Now, if you then get a thousand listeners that's 710 pounds, suddenly that podcast is going to earn you a lot more than what you can do by asking people to give you as a generous donation on Paton or any other mechanism. So streaming stats, I think is gonna be the way that people pay for it, and that is a much cleaner form of value for value because it's really, I only pay you as long as I keep listening, but I think you'll find you'll earn more in the long run through that mechanism than you will through Paton. Is anybody

Trevor Bell: 48:46

out there earning more through. through Satos than they are through their other

James Cridland: 48:53

methods. I'm sure Adam is, but, uh, , I was gonna say in terms of

Dan Misener: 48:57

Dave, certainly are.

James Cridland: 48:58

You think so? But in, in terms of anybody else? No, I don't. I don't think so. Not yet. But, uh, by the way, um, so I calculated our numbers. Um, and, and in the last six months we have earned 1.1 million SAT from 60 different people. Uh, 1.1 million SAT is 191 US dollars, or 282 Australian, uh, Australian kangaroo dollars. We've had 205 boosts. And interestingly, Trevor, I think from 205, uh, boosts from men.? Yes.. I don't remember A single woman who has, who has boosted us, said there's something there. Um, and we've had 5,168 streamed sat minutes. But I do wonder whether there's, uh, an option there to have some form of monthly. Uh, if you, if you get value from what we do, then send us a hundred thousand dollars. Uh, a hundred thousand sat. A hundred thousand dollars would be nice. A hundred thousand sat a month. You know, maybe that would be the plan. But, um, I think there's, I, I think it's always really interesting to kick the tires and to double check that what we are doing is. And, uh, I'm really grateful to you, uh, Trevor, for, um, you've, you, you've both Trevor and Sam, but you've clearly both done your research . So, so I'm very, very grateful for you. Uh, and thank you so much for, uh, coming on the iron fist and the velvet glove. Where can people find that?

Trevor Bell: 50:24

Oh, iron fist velvet glove.com au And that'll have all the links that you need and, uh, including

James Cridland: 50:29

your Patreon link, I'm imagining

Trevor Bell: 50:31

Indeed. Yes. You'll see that. So you, just to be clear so people don't misunderstand, I'm, I'm all for value. For value. I, I hate advertising on podcasts. I think value for value is the way to go. I just think that the other payment methods are more appropriate. Put it in as an option by all means, but. Concentrate on your other stuff beforehand. Well, particularly if you're in a country like Australia, only 5% of people actually have some crypto.

James Cridland: 50:57

Well, I look forward to, uh, uh, enabling your podcast for value, for value. And uh, Trevor, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it. Yeah, Trevor, thanks for joining us.

Sam Sethi: 51:07

Thanks guys.

Trevor Bell: 51:08

Thank

James Cridland: 51:09

you. Uh, and by the way, you can, uh, send us a boost of course, or you can send us cash pod news.net/weekly support. Well, Sam, let's move on, shall we? We've got a couple of other stories, uh, to cover. The first around advertising. Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 51:22

Acast again, we, we seem to be talking about them a lot. This week has launched a self serve platform for podcast advertising. The platform allows brands of any size and budget to start advertising for as little as $250.

James Cridland: 51:37

Yeah, it's a really cool little, uh, system. This, um, it's been promoted by a little, uh, toy shop in Ireland who used it. And they said that it was amazing and brilliant, and that's exactly the sort of thing that they wanted, wanted, and actually this could potentially open podcast, uh, revenue up to the long tail. So, uh, I think it's a really clever plan. So well done Acast for that self-serve

Sam Sethi: 51:59

platform. Yeah. Just as a reminder, we asked. Bonded and supported by Buzz Brow. So you can also do the same thing on Buzz Brow Ads.

James Cridland: 52:07

Yeah, you can as well. If you want to promote your own podcast, then that's a great way of, um, of, uh, going there. Uh, and Speka, uh, launched, uh, something which it, it is just got a nice little story behind it of, uh, Magda, who was a pro who still is, uh, a programmatic specialist at Spika in Barcelona in, uh, Catalonia, in Spain, uh, who was the first person to work on ad quality control. Now she has a tool named after her, which is called Magda, the Machine Augmented Guard for Dynamic Advertising. And what this basically is, is it's a tool that Sprier has built. To just check what podcasts are about and make sure that actually the ad categories, that the pod, that the, the ad categories that the advertiser has put next to those, uh, ads are actually correct and in many cases they're not. Um, so that's a. A pretty smart little, uh, system that, uh, ska has done. I think it's a first, I can't think of anybody else who's, uh, done this. And, uh, audio boom has done a little bit of trialing on that, so, uh, so that was, uh, pretty cool. Um, and also Lipson have come up with some numbers, haven't they? Yeah. The

Sam Sethi: 53:19

advertised cast revealed its marketplace ad rates for November. So the average CPM was $24 and 76 cents up to 3% month a month, and up 6% year on year. So the graph is heading upwards, James. Yeah,

James Cridland: 53:33

which is really good, given that we are all supposed to be, uh, heading headlong towards a recession. It's really good to, uh, see that actually, uh, ad spend is still going up.

Sam Sethi: 53:43

Now. Apple, uh, apple Podcasts announced the winner of the 2022. I feel like this needs to be a fanfare soundtrack to this moment, but the Apple Podcast Awards, the Slate Podcast, slow burn, which was discussing Roe versus Wade, which I can see is a massive issue in America. Was selected by the Apple Podcast editorial team. They do exist in the usa. So James, I'm gonna sit back all yours,. James Cridland: Yes. And I think that's lovely. Uh, why It's called the Apple Podcasts Award. I don't know. Should be called the Apple Podcasts Award for the us because that's what it is. What? Sam Sethi: Um, well, why is Why

James Cridland: 54:24

is it called? I mean, well, yes, I know, I know. Um, so I think that there's one question there. Now., I did notice that. Uh, so they made the announcement and the am and the announcement was accompanied by, uh, an announcement that there were six new episodes of Slow Burn, which are exclusive to Apple Podcasts, which, um, were part of the Apple Podcasts Award announcement. So basically, hello, congratulations. You've won an award. Would you mind making some exclusive content for us? Uh, to put, just on our platform alone, apple, um, you know, quietly will needle, uh, Spotify about, uh, making a world garden. And there they are, making a world garden of putting some freely available shows, but they're only available on Apple Podcasts. Exclusive to Apple Podcasts. Oh, and by the way, here's an award. Thank you very much. It's just, there's something that smells about this and I, I dunno what smells. But something

Sam Sethi: 55:22

smells well. If you can't beat them, join them, I suppose is the strategy there at Apple?

James Cridland: 55:26

Yeah, I think so. It's just a little bit, a little bit weird. But anyway, apple are also doing big podcast lists for each region. Uh, Australia has just brought their podcast lists out today, showing top shows and top followed shows, top page shows, all of that. So that, um, lots of lists that we can expect over the next two or three. Um, I'm told that we will have a full list to publish in Pod News next week. So looking forward to doing that and looking forward to seeing actually how different podcasts do in different markets because top followed shows should, as I understand it, just be simple, straightforward stats from each particular, uh, storefront. So you should be able to see how this American Life, for example, does in Australia as compared to in the US as compared to Canada and so on and so forth. So really look, looking forward to. All of that data, you might be able to see it already. If you visit Apple Podcasts, the app, um, on your, uh, phone or on your laptop. Um, you can't see it in any other way. Um, and if you have got those in your region, then Hara. But, uh, hopefully we should be able to publish all of those.

Sam Sethi: 56:36

Yeah. And Spotify, uh, launched or rolled out yesterday worldwide. All of your data about what you've been listening to and what podcast you listen to, and they did a little bit of. Uh, me and Briggs style announcement about what type of person you were, where you were adventurous or, so did you get yours, James? How

James Cridland: 56:58

was your Britney Spears? I, I don't use Spotify. Weirdly. YouTube music brought out exactly the same thing. Ah, uh, not talking about podcasts, of course, but talking about music. Uh, when I turned YouTube on this morning, YouTube music on this morning, they

Sam Sethi: 57:11

don't talk about

James Cridland: 57:11

podcasts at YouTube. Uh, but no, uh, no podcasts there as yet. Um, so I think there's gonna be an awful lot of this stuff, uh, coming over the next, uh, couple of weeks. Uh, one thing that Spotify did say surprise, surprise, the most streamed podcast on Spotify over the last 12 months was Joe Rogan. Who'd have thought it? Yes. Uh, in People News, Taylor Kitch has been announced as Director of Product Management at Libson. She joins from Pandora and Sirius XM Libson, adding additional, uh, high convoluted management, uh, at the rate of knots. Uh, so good for them. And Josh Yahuda has been announced by Triton Digital as its new director of partnerships for their programmatic marketplace. He joins from Target Spot if you're looking for a job POD News has podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world. They're free to post as well. It'll just take two minutes to add a new role. It's a pod news.net/. Jobs.

Dan Misener: 58:09

The tech

James Cridland: 58:10

stuff. Tech stuff on the pod news weekly review. Yes. It's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the pod newsletter. And here's where we do all of the, the tech talk, uh, spatial audio. Sam. Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 58:23

I saw you wrote about this. The New York Times has shared its experiments with spatial audio. Now I've not been excited by spatial audio. It's sort of been one of those, oh, here we go. Um, left ear, right ear. Left ear, you know. Um, but I. Some Apple AirPod two s, which have uh, enhanced spatial audio built into them. And I went to the website and I listened to the podcast trailer that they've put up there. The actual trailer, which has got mosquitoes flying around my head from left to right in a couple of birds in the background and some river in my left ear that goes to my right ear is interesting. The actual piece they do afterwards, which is the two people who have been working on it, is actually much more interesting cuz you can actually then do rotating your head left, rotating your head right. And the actual sound rotates with you. Right. I do think it can, in. The future make podcasting much more interesting. I just wonder how much time, energy, and effort needs to be put in at the moment to actually get this sort of effect, which it is. What, um, you know, I can hear something in my left ear that moves to my right, like a motorbike goes across the back of my head. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I'm not sure it's gonna go mainstream yet. Uh, yeah,

James Cridland: 59:39

I kind of agree. Um, it, it's using either Adobe at Moss or Mac one, depending on whether you are listening on a iPhone or on a Android phone. Um, and interestingly, either you've got your fancy uh, headphones, your AirPod Pro twos that do spatial audio, um, and have the senses in them. Or frankly, you can just turn your. You can just turn your phone around. So if your phone is in your pocket, um, then as you turn, then the audio turns as well. So, uh, I think that's interesting. But yeah, I'm not too convinced about that. And certainly for a podcast like this, what an earth would be the point. Oh, we

Sam Sethi: 1:00:17

could have great sound effects in the background in Australia from you, James, cooker, burs, and, uh, you know, kangaroos hopping by. It'd be lovely. And

James Cridland: 1:00:25

the rain, uh, that's what we want., uh, email addresses.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:30

Yeah, I mean, this is a conversation that's been ongoing for a while. Um, it started off with a cast, obviously. Doing some naughty spamming, uh, which upset numerous hosts across the industry. Um, so Apple have said that podcasts don't need email addresses in their RSS feeds anymore to combat spam, but it's not gone down well with everybody. The Canadian Podcast award says, Uhuh, we ain't having it. And I was gonna do a Canadian accent, but I dunno how to do one, so I'll just do it in my own. But the Canadian Podcast Award said they're not having it. The removal of email addresses from RSS feeds isn't one we agree with or will support the organization says adding. We don't have any plans at the moment. Support feeds without contact information. Mm, yes. So there you go, James. Not everyone's in favor of

James Cridland: 1:01:17

it. No, not everybody's in favor of it. Um, my understanding is that they contact the podcaster to say, Hey, you've been, uh, chosen as a podcast in these, in these awards. Do you want to come and claim your podcast? Um, and so you can see that this has broken their business model. Um, and, um, Yeah. Uh, the difficulty is of course, you can't only put emails into RSS feeds for the good people. Um, and I think that that's the issue that this company, uh, has. But interesting to see companies, uh, supporting the verification code. Transistor is already doing that. Buzzsprout will be doing that by the way, in January. Um, So I understand. Uh, so, um, the verification code will be a way for you to, uh, prove that you own that particular podcast. Uh, so that's a quite nice, uh, thing. Uh, transistor, also adding chapter timestamps into episode notes. And, um, I pointed out to them if they made one little change, it would work in Spotify as well. Uh, and they've made that one little change. So I'm, I'm awaiting my large check from Justin. I

Sam Sethi: 1:02:22

was gonna say, uh, for fixing that. I was gonna say, where's your royalties mate? Where's your royalties gonna in ? Yes. Now Dave Jones, he is a busy boy. Um, he's been working on a new release of the Pod Ping Cloud. Uh, it's the hosted front end to pod p the notification system that is on the hive blockchain. Gosh, that was a lot of words in one sentence. Um, yes. What's fundamentally? Fundamentally, it's a way of having. Your episode when it's first published from a host hitting a cloud on the Hde network, and then that automatically being updated in apps in real time, pretty much, as opposed to polling every hour asking, have you got a new episode mate? Can I have it? Have you got one? Um, yeah, so hopefully this new release is something that will work better cuz the last pod p release, um, we tried to use that on the platform I'm building. Yeah. And it was a little bit flaky. Yes.

James Cridland: 1:03:21

A little bit flaky. Yes. So I think this is, uh, also much more capable of having many, many, many more shows being released at the same time. So, um, very cool. Uh, that work is ongoing. There's now a release candidate, uh, which is being tested and then that'll be rolled out. And, uh, if you're already using the pod ping cloud, which is a pod ping.cloud, um, then you need do nothing because it'll just, um, it'll just go there, which is a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:47

Now James, uh, talking of Tank, you've been playing with O P three again. Bored. James Cridland: Yes. Yes. Trying to get out of the way of the mother-in-law over the weekend. No, uh, clearly not that . Um, yes. So this is the open, um, uh, POD podcast prefix, um, uh, thing where, uh, you can, uh, grab. Uh, data and share your data for your podcasts with, uh, with everybody else. Uh, it's a very cool little system. So I've built something which I'll publish on Monday, uh, which is just a piece of a very dirty php which can go and grab the information of, uh, individual episodes or shows and give you overall figures. So I took a look at a date in the middle of, um, November for the Pod News Daily. Um, and uh, yeah, it's just so much easier to use to get, uh, a ton of stats if you self host. So I was able to find out how many hits we've got, not downloads, cuz downloads need a little bit more work. But, uh, total hits, total unique, uh, listeners, uh, where people were. And one of the thing weird things that I found, and I don't understand why, and I'd love to understand why. And if you know why I would love, uh, you to explain this to me weekly at pod news do net, uh, is my email address, um, is Indonesia. It does incredibly well for Google Audio News. So when you talk to your speaker and you say, play the latest news from Pod News Daily, um, it seems to be doing incredibly well in Indonesia, but it's everywhere in Indonesia. So Jakarta, um, It's doing well, but um, uh, there are other parts because you can pull time zones in there as well, so you can see all of the different places that people are listening to this podcast and it seems to be doing incredibly well, and I don't understand why, why should it be doing so well? Just in Indonesia. So that was a bit of a weird one. Big new t-shirt for you instead of big in Japan, which was a famous song, big in Indonesia. That's the, that's your new strap line, James? Yeah. Oh, big in Indonesia.

Dan Misener: 1:05:55

Oh yeah.

James Cridland: 1:05:57

Uh, yes. No, I don't think so. But uh, yes. So US number one, Indonesia, number two, uh, great Britain, number three, Canada number four, and Singapore weirdly number five, uh, with Australia coming in at number six for the top countries, uh, for the pardon, news daily. So, uh, yes, very strange. But anyway, I'll be publishing that data or that code on Monday so you can pull your own data. Uh, the one thing that it does say in that, uh, code, because it's got a few examples that you can type. So you can get stats for different people. You can get the stats for the Buzz Cast Podcast, for example. Uh, you can get stats for, um, for podcasting 2.0. You can also get stats for No Agenda. Don't do that because my goodness, that podcast is massive. And if you do that, you will fill your server and, uh, the whole thing will run out of memory. It'll be a big disaster. So don't do that unless you've got a massive, massive server. Uh, but my Goodness, no Agenda is a large, large podcast. Also new in, uh, POD News last week, um, weekly podcast stats from the podcast Index have started publishing those. And you should notice from today, uh, they are not only numbers, but also, uh, whether they've increased or decreased week on week, um, the amount of updated shows and the amount of new episodes in the podcasting ecosystem. Uh, so, uh, last time that I looked, 196,000. Updated shows last week and 449,000 new episodes, uh, last week. So really interesting to see how that's changed over the last, uh, week because of course that was, uh, Thanksgiving week and you had thought that quite a few podcasts would've been on hiatus. Uh, so there we are, but not around the rest of the world.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:37

No. So let's go from Indonesia to India. I think, uh, in India you've got, luminary has launched in India, it's, uh, pricing is 999 rupees or.$12 20. So who is Luminary James?

James Cridland: 1:07:52

Oh, so Luminary is, um, it's uh, probably the biggest, uh, subscription based podcast company that people would've heard of, certainly in the us, um, 34 99 in the us. But because of, um, the cost of living in India, it's just$12 20, uh, or 999 rupees if you buy a year's subscription. But interesting seeing Luminary jumping into the Indian market. Uh, Vietnam, uh, there's a company called Phono, F O N O, which has raised $1.8 million to expand into podcasting. It's an audiobook company. It also does meditation content, book summaries. Sounds a bit like Blinkist to me. 130,000 monthly active. Well, 0.8 million is gonna go a long way in Vietnam. Uh, so it'll be interesting to see how phono, uh, do with, uh, all of that. Um, there's been stuff going on in Dubai.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:47

Yeah. In the uae. The second annual podcast event took place, uh, at the Dubai Press Club. Um, we, where did you go? You went over to, was it Dubai

James Cridland: 1:08:57

or South? No, I went to Saudi Arabia. So this was podcast, um, in, uh, Dubai. Um, and, uh, yeah, there's an awful lot of stuff going on in the, uh, Arab countries at the moment. There was, uh, something, uh, just before I went to Saudi Arabia, there was another, uh, podcast, uh, event going on, uh, in that part of the world as well. Um, so yeah, it's, it's, um, really growing. Um, the Press Club has launched an Arab podcasters program to grow podcasters in the region. Um, so they've been doing a bit of that. Um, but also, you know, it was a full grown conference with all kinds of things going on, so, yeah. Really

Sam Sethi: 1:09:38

interesting. James. A genuine question. Given the strong views of the government on certain topics, um, how are they monitor monitoring these podcasts to ensure that they're not saying stuff that I suppose they don't want going out? I think

James Cridland: 1:09:55

this was one of the things that I took away from, uh, Saudi Arabia, was that actually. A lot of people at that conference, and it was a government funded conference, but a lot of people at that conference saw this as being, um, a way of, uh, encouraging free speech, a way of encouraging conversations about all kinds of things. And, um, I am not necessarily sure that there's an awful lot of censorship, an awful lot of that sort of thing going on. Anybody can use whatever they like in terms of podcast host. Um, anybody can, uh, you know, uh, say whatever they want to end up saying. So I thought that that was, um, interesting because yes, that was the first question that I had was, you know, what, um, are people going to be saying things that the government don't necessarily want in Qatar, for example, would you put a podcast together about being gay in Qatar or indeed in Saudi Arabia, two places where it's illegal? Um, you know, I don't know. I, I don't quite know how that works. I'd be fascinated to find out. Mm.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:59

Now talking about events, uh, let's have a look around the world, James.

James Cridland: 1:11:02

Yes. Uh, there's, uh, pod Fest, of course, which is coming up in Orlando in Florida. If you like warm, hot, muggy weather, then come to Brisbane. But if you're not going to come to Brisbane, go to Orlando in Florida instead. Uh, that's in, uh, the end of January, January the 26th. Very much looking forward, uh, to that, there's a lot of, um, noise going on about podcast at the moment, podcast movement, evolutions of course, coming, uh, in March in Las Vegas, which. We'll both be there. We will. Uh, so very much looking forward to that. I've booked my ticket. I've booked the, the, the hotel I've, it's, it's, it's all done. Blind me. The, the ticket's expensive. I'll tell you, blind me, um, anybody would think there's a war on. Uh, and the podcast show in London, uh, is coming back, uh, May 24th to the 25th, uh, in London. We will both be there as well. And looking forward to that. There are more events both paid for and free at pod news, virtual events or events in a place with people. If you're organizing something, you should tell the world about it. It's free to be listed at pod news.net/events. Boostgram

Dan Misener: 1:12:05

Boostgram Corner,

James Cridland: 1:12:07

corner corner on the Pod News Weekly review. Yes, it's our favorite time, Boostgram Corner. Uh, we've got a four different boosts here. I wonder if they're all from blokes. Uh, what do you think, Sam? Yeah, I think

Sam Sethi: 1:12:22

so at the moment. Ladies, . You know, actually just a genuine comment on that. Um, we had Ariel Nilo, who's lovely, and she, she was a co-host while you were getting married? Yes, and I, we got to this section of the podcast and we were talking about booster grams and sh it just simply wasn't. She was interested in. She hadn't got her head round. I was like, what? You haven't got into this yet? And I just thought, yeah, maybe, maybe it is a bl key thing. Maybe Trevor's got a point there, but I do think it will go mainstream. It's just, it's just too complex for many people right now. And you know, they're probably going, yeah, we'll wait, we'll wait till it becomes

James Cridland: 1:13:00

much easier. Well, somebody that was doubtless, uh, shouting at his speakers earlier on, uh, Adam Curry, who has, uh, very kindly sent us a, uh, boost. Oh, I can't tell. Um, through, Uh, on, uh, this is contracts that we are looking at, uh, this week and, and it doesn't tell you what. Um, so who knows what Adam Curry is, uh, using here. But anyway, 25,000 sat he says. And he, uh, uh, so thank you Adam. You are the, uh, biggest booster for this week. And he says, robot voices insult my ears and intelligence. Uh, we were talking a little bit about AI last week. I would tend to agree with quite a lot of that. It's

Sam Sethi: 1:13:37

very interesting though, uh, how certain sat in Saturn aren't appearing on contracts at the moment. By the way, James, just so you know, oh.

James Cridland: 1:13:46

Right. Wow. So maybe this isn't all of them. Um,

Sam Sethi: 1:13:50

but no, it's not. There are several more. Um, but, uh, we did get a lovely a thousand sat from, uh, at Asil as Stevie, is that correct? Have I absolutely butchered that name? Dream? James Cridland: Quite possibly. And what does he, let's, let's just, you know, acknowledge it. What does he say? Okay, I'm gonna try that again. S. Uh, sys TV anyway. Uh, so you had, uh, said Matic got an update and you can get it on iOS and Android. Is that really true? Well, we don't do things that aren't checked. Um, I couldn't find Customatic on Google playing. Google Play isn't mentioned on their website at all. And I took this from Matic, so I will go away and we will check it for you. But yes, I did take it from Matics press release, so I'm sure that unless they're telling us porcupines, uh, that it is available.

James Cridland: 1:14:46

Indeed. Sinus was using Fountain as was Adam, Carrie Rasa, Lavera, RAA Avera, um, uh,, who's probably not Italian. Uh, and nor is that accent. Where is this Ppod Clock feed? Uh, they say 500 sat. Thank you. I haven't had any luck finding it, and it sounds great. Uh, it's a brilliant podcast. You'll, you'll thoroughly enjoy it. For the five seconds. Um, uh, you should just find it called Pod clock, uh, all one word in your favorite podcast app. Um, and also in in in Spotify. Uh, if you don't find it there, then uh, do a search for it on the pod news website, pod news.net, and you'll find all of the links, uh, for that. Uh, thank you, uh, for that. Um, you're absolutely right. Not all of the, um, boosts came through, uh, Justin from the, um, optimal Living Daily Podcast sent through 555 sat using Fountain, uh, solid. Get your own.com impression. Uh, . He says, uh, I was doing my little impersonation of, uh, tar Karon. Get your own.com here. I've got something I, I wanna say, but I, I don't think I can say it. That's right, Todd. Um, so, uh, thank you very much, uh, Justin for that. Um, And, uh, yes. And we've got one more as well, which is, uh, complimenting you on your Dutch, uh, Sam, cuz you were using some Dutch last week, weren't you?

Sam Sethi: 1:16:08

I think that's a stretch.. I do think this is a stretch. It says Your Dutch is getting better by the week. A perfect reason to send my first ever boost. First ever boost. Yes. Sorry. It's only a hundred sat. You're still figuring out how to buy sat, which isn't, again, going back to what Trevor said, again, what Trevor was saying. Yes, , we're not disagreeing with you, Trevor, if you, if you're still listening to this podcast and haven't decided to abandon ship. But what we are saying is that we, uh, James and I, um, being at the bleeding edge or cutting edge of where we hope podcasting is, uh, feel that it's the right things, that we, uh, continue to promote this, uh, because we do believe genuinely that this is the way that podcasting will,

James Cridland: 1:16:51

uh, and be in the future. Anyway, he continues. Uh, thanks for keeping me updated on podcasting news every week. And then what does he say? Beaned. Sam Sethi: Gru. Yes. What Netherland, uh, and I will look that up. Beaned, I think was what I said last week, which was, thank you. So I, I'm getting my, uh, learning in. Um, thank you. And I think that says Greetings from Netherland. It does. Greetings from, uh, the Netherlands, but, uh, who knows? Uh, doubtless again, Adam is shouting at his speakers. Uh, if you get value from what we do, the pod News weekly review is separate from Pod News, Sam, and i's share everything from it. We really appreciate your support so we can continue making this show. As I mentioned earlier, you can support us with Cash app pod news.net/weekly support, or you can support us with sets by hitting the Boost button in your podcast app. If you don't have one pod news.net/new podcast apps, we'll help you find a new podcast app like Fountain, for example. Um, so what's been happening for you this week? Uh, Sam, you've clearly been working on your app that much we know. Have you had lunch with anybody? Exciting.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:56

Yeah. Another lunch. Uh, I went out with Jake, the CEO from Message Herd. We, we had a lovely lunch at the Ivy actually, which is very

James Cridland: 1:18:03

nice. Oh, very nice. Did you enjoy the

Sam Sethi: 1:18:05

pie? No. His father Alan had the, uh, pie. No, I had fish and chips. No, it was very nice. There was no alcohol on this one. We were very good. So yes, it was a lovely convers. You've been a busy

James Cridland: 1:18:16

boy this week, . Well, so I shared an article on Medium, which uh, I actually wrote a, a, a year and a half ago, which, um, was, uh, what Twitter knows about you. Uh, cause quite a lot of people are leaving, uh, Twitter and all of a sudden I thought, hang on a minute, I can post this article on, on, uh, Masteron, on the Fedi verse and people will read it and they'll get terrified at the amount of information that Twitter knows about you. Uh, so I did and lots of people have been reading it ever since. Uh, which is good cuz I, I earn money from every time somebody somebody reads that. Uh, so that's nice. Um, so I enjoyed doing that. Um, I enjoyed going to the Brisbane meetup, uh, of course on uh, Friday of last week. Um, we're hoping to make those a monthly thing cuz I think that would be a good plan. There were about 10 people who turned up, but it would be nice if more did, um, probably don't do it on a Friday and probably don't do it on the South Bank cuz the South Bank is full on a Friday and it was very difficult to get anywhere. Um, so maybe that's. The, uh, that's the plan as well. And I was on a podcast as well, which you should download and or watch, uh, it's called Meet Your Podcast Editor. I joked that it should probably be called Meet your Pod News Editor, um, because that's who, who is, uh, the guest? It's me. Um, And I talked about humor, uh, to Stephanie fio who, um, was, uh, hosting the, uh, show. I have a feeling that she doesn't pronounce her surname Fu actually, I, I'm, I may have just, uh, completely messed it up. But anyway, um, you can, uh, watch that or listen to that, uh, in your favorite podcast app. It's called Meet Your Podcast Editor. Uh, and that's it for this week.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:52

Yeah, you can give us feedback using email to weekly pod news.net, or send us as we have been saying through the whole of this, show a boostgram. If your podcast app doesn't support Boost, then grab a new app from pod news.net/new podcast

James Cridland: 1:20:08

apps. Our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our, our voiceover is Sheila D, and we are hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout Podcast hosting. Made easy. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter@podnews.net. Tell your friends and grow the show. Support us and support us. The POD News weekly review will return next week. Keep listening.