It's Friday, the 17th of February, 2023. The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Sethi. I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News. And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of PodFans. In the chapters today, why is V ox Media raising a hundred million dollars a cast financial results? Are they up or down? Hindenburg Pro 2.0, is it a des cript replacement and I've a trade secret or two to share? And I am Doverdas Jogschos, the founder of Arsas Blue. I'll talk later about how Arsas Blue supports all the new podcasting 2.0 features. I'm Nick Dungley. I'm from Hindenburg. I'm the creative director. And I'm Chris Modus, the CEO of Hindenburg. And later on, we will be talking about Hindenburg Pro 2. They will. This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzzspr out. Last week, more than 4,000 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with powerful tools and remarkable customer support. And now you can turn your listeners into supporters with Buzzsprout subscriptions. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review. James, let's kick it off this week. Vox Media, a chorus-wisher on the end of her last podcast. Knock it out. I'm not sure it's public domain, but she basically said with Scott Galloway that they're raising $100 million. Wow. What are they going to do with $100 million, James? Well, who knows? I mean, Vox Media made a number of people redundant only a couple of weeks ago. So maybe they were doing that just to keep things a little bit more lean for then a take over. So I'm not quite sure what's going on there, but Penske Media will own about 20% of the company. After buying $100 million worth of it, they own things like Rolling Stone and Variety. You wouldn't know anybody at V ox Media, would you? That you might be able to get on? Well, I thought I'd reach out to them and Neymar Raza, who's lovely, she's the co-host of On with Cara Swisher, but she's also director of Vox Media and said she'll be on the show next week because we want to know what they're going to do with $100 million. So, yeah, stay tuned. Excellent. Well, that's, you see, as ever, you know, everybody in the business. Spotify also has a new investor as well, I believe. It's going to say it's really easy, James. I'll just drop your name and then they open the door. It's fine. It's good. Of course. Yes, Spotify does have a new investor. It's a hedge fund, though. And I'm not sure that Danny Alex is going to be too happy with this investor. Why not? Because it's an investor who's an activist investor. You can rename that to an ag itating investor as well, if you want. Generally, these type of investors get their equity and then they go and start sitting on boards and start dictating down to the executive team how they want to see the company run. And it seems that this hedge fund wants to sort out what was built to last and what was built for the bubble, i.e. he wants to cut out the fat, change the company a little bit. And I think this is going to be a little bit interesting to watch what Daniel has to do. The company is called Value Act Capital Management. They're based in San Francisco. We don't quite know how much they've invested because they haven't yet made the SEC filing. I believe that they've got a little bit of grace period to do that. But yeah, interesting to take a peek at what's going to happen with Spotify there. There was another piece this week, James, of another person giving Spotify a good kicking semaphore writer post about how Spotify's podcast bet went wrong. Has it gone wrong, James? Well, has it gone wrong? Exactly. The New York Times is also the latest to write about the apparent demise of the entire industry with something that they call podcast companies once walking on air feel the strain of gravity. And I have to say Spotify's podcast bet went wrong, as Sem aphore say. They came from nowhere four years ago. They are now number one in most countries in less than four years. So Amazon Music, Google Podcast s, Samsung Free, do they get a free ride basically? And it's all Spotify and they've gone hideously wrong by becoming number one in most countries. I don't know. I'm just a little bit sort of grumpy about the whole Spotify rubbish stuff, which is coming out of the financial press, particularly the financial press. And yeah, they've been running the company at a loss because that's what investors wanted them to do. And now investors are saying, no, no, no, we need you to make some profit. And so they're turning around the company to make some profit. So I don't know. I'm just being a little bit gr umpy, but I'm aware I've said this before. What? That you're a little bit grumpy or just Spotify? I'm not sure. This this reminds me that there was a brilliant interview. Michael Parkinson in the UK interviewed George Best and he told a story about how he was one of the best football ers in the world, but he suffered from alcoholism and. But he was a very good looking man and so have, you know, women flocked to him. And he was in a hotel with Miss World, Maria Stavin,£100,000 on the bed that he'd won in a bet. And he'd got a knock on the door from the waiter who said, I've got your champagne, Mr Best. And then as the waiter was leaving, he turned around to George Best and said, where did it all go wrong? And George and George looked around and went, Miss World, £100,000 on the bed. Yeah, I'm not sure either. And. Wouses, it sort of reminds me a little bit of Spotify. Yeah, yeah, they are making a loss. Yes, we do not like the fact that they're proprietary and closed. But actually, they've made a bet that has moved the needle for the whole industry in terms of making the wider general public aware of podcast ing and some of the names that have come to podcasting are because Spotify paid big money to bring them into podcasting. So, you know, yes, we'd love them to support the podcast to index and join the ecosystem. But at the same time, they have helped everyone, you know, in getting more people interested into podcasting. Yeah, I think we should possibly be giving them a little bit more credit where credit is due. More financial stuff in a minute. Just want to say, oh, I mean, sticking on financial stuff. Just want to say thank you to our power supporters using Buzz sprout subscriptions. Super easy if you're with Buzz sprout to get this set up. Nick Ivanov, Dave Jones, the pod sage himself, Matt Medeiros, Marshall Brown, Cameron Moll, H ouser Dictionary and Kevin Finn. Thank you so much for your generous support for using Buzz sprout subscriptions. You can support us too. You can hit the support button in your new podcast app or visit weekly.podnews.net. Now, looking at financial results, as we were just then, let's have a look at ACARS who have just announced Q4 results. ACARS maintains positive despite job cuts and continued unprofitability. The operating loss dropped by almost 60 percent following budget cuts, so staff cuts that they had last year. The operating loss amounted to five point six million dollars. So overall, though, James, Ross Adams and the CFO, Emily Vill ate, shared their full and quarterly results, saying they're very bullish and upmarket about what's going to happen in 2023. Did you have a look at the results and what were your thoughts? Yeah, now you see this is you. You start with the operating loss and although it's getting better, you start with the operating loss. I started with sales, ad sales are up 35 percent year on year in the last quarter, which is pretty good. They've now got 1.3 billion listens, which is up 22 percent year on year on track towards profitability in 2024. The one thing that they do say, which I have asked for clarification on is that they are now very excited that they host a total of 92000 podcasts, which they claim is a 130 percent year on year growth. Now, 92000 podcast sounds like quite a lot. And in fact, when you look into the podcast index, or if you look at the listen notes directory, then they only list about 25000. So I'm a little bit confused as to where the rest of them are. I know that the BBC is included in that. I know that VG, which is a big Scandinavian publisher, is also included in that. But I don't quite understand where this additional 50,000 podcasts are. So I've asked them for a little bit of clarity on that. But yeah, it's all looking, I think, pretty good for a cast in terms of they're losing less money. They're earning more money in terms of ad revenue and all of that. It all seems to be going in the right direction. Yeah, I mean, in the sense that they are the open podcast company, that's what they like to be seen as. How much of what they do, those supports any of the podcast index namespace? Yeah, I don't know whether they are doing any of that at the moment. And clearly, if they are doing my understanding is that they are automatically doing transcripts, so they should be able to publish those automatically into their feeds and everything else. But at the end of the day, that may not be something which is particularly interesting to them right now. I mean, obviously, value for value isn't going to be of interest to them at all. But you could see that some of the other tags, particularly, you know, person tags might be really handy. There's someone that used to work for NPR, Stacey Goers, who has been working at ACAST now for a number of years. And she's very, you know, understanding about what the new podcast namespace can offer. So perhaps there's something there. But yeah, who knows, I get kind of a feeling that ACAST's technology is it's very good, but maybe needs a little bit of, you know, if it's been going for quite some time, there's probably quite a lot of technical debt to fix in there as well. Would you say ACAST is Spotify's next biggest competitor? I mean, I know Apple is, but would that be the number two competitor to them? In terms of competitor to ad revenue, I would suggest that ACAST is pretty high up there. Yes, you've got SiriusXM and an iHeart, but I would suggest that ACAST is pretty high there. Apple, of course, isn't a competitor to Spotify at all when you look at ad revenue. And so, you know, from that point of view, that that's an interesting, you know, side that actually ACAST is there earning ad revenue from the same clients who are paying with from the same clients as who use Spotify and the Spotify advertising network. So, you know, I guess from that point of view, yeah, there is some competition there. ACAST, of course, very, very clearly pointing out that they are available everywhere and not just within the Spotify ecosystem, which is, of course, their point of difference. Yeah, just looking back on the last quarter, just to remind everyone, ACAST had done some significant things. One of those was the Amazon Music Deal, where they offered ad free podcasts for Prime members. The agreement means that Amazon Music has bought all the advertising space in thousands of ACAST podcasts, so that was pretty good for them. And they and they also launch their self-serve advertising platform. So they've done quite a few things. Yeah, they have. And they've done quite a lot of planning for the for the future as well. They are removing things that may be relying on cookies and IP addresses and instead using their keyword targeting stuff, which is very much contextual targeting based on the content of the podcast, which is a very clever plan. And they've also been doing a number of different agreements. I mean, of course, they bought Podchaser last year, but they also have signed an agreement with a lot of different companies, including Mia van Diett, which is a very large podcast studio in the Netherlands. Twenty seven point five million listens annually. So, yeah, they appear to be doing pretty well from that side. Yeah. So again, I think ACAST looks like they're in a healthy position, having cut the fat, made a few changes for twenty twenty three, I'd say. Yeah, I think so. And I think certainly when you have a look at net sales going up 35 percent year on year, it's why it's why I say that I'm a bit bored of these doom and gloom article saying that podcasting is in a dreadful state. Just take a look at ACAST. ACAST is doing fantastically well. Also, take a look at Live One. They're the owners of podcast one. I don't really care about the rest of that particular company. But if you look at ad revenue, which is mostly podcast one, that grew by three percent year on year in the nine months ending the end of last year. So they are seeing improved ad revenue. One would assume that means that they are in reverse for the last quarter, I would guess, but even so, they're still doing pretty well. So that company is going to be spinning out podcast one before the end of March, assuming that the conditions that they've set themselves work out. So, you know, again, I don't think that there's a a desperately sad story here of podcasting falling apart because you're seeing lots of other podcast companies doing really, really well. And indeed, you know, Spotify's ad revenue is going up. So it just makes me a little bit frustrated with all of these very negative stories about podcasting or the gloss has gone off and nobody's spending any money. You know, I mean, Spotify is even still signing exclusives. They signed an exclusive last week with somebody in Sweden, I believe. So, you know, it's I think there's quite a lot of people rather enjoying giving Spotify a kick. And I'm not sure that it's necessarily a good plan. Do you think, you know, that story about 80 percent of podcasts were disappearing because of anchor has led to these stories as well? I mean, has that been the catalyst to fuel the negativity? Yeah, I mean, I think I think there's been two things. There's been that number of 80 percent fewer podcasts, which is a completely bogus number, which is made up of just purely anchor and anchor, no longer being automatically put into Apple podcasts. So you've got that sort of side of it. And also, obviously, you know, Spotify has been making some pretty large headline grabbing cuts, both cutting people and also cutting, you know, shows and various other things over the last year. So I think it's it's fair if you don't know much about the industry to look into it and go, oh, a podcasting must be having a dreadful time. But actually, if you just spend 10 minutes, which is more than these journalists are doing, if you spend 10 minutes longer to actually have a look at what is really going on, I don't think that there's a negative issue here, to be honest. But maybe I'm just, you know, trying to put a nice gloss on it because I would, wouldn't I? But yeah, I don't think there was an issue here. Now, let's move on. James, I didn't know you were taking the title of pod stage from Dave Jones, but you tweeted out last week, I've seen the future and it works. So tell me, James, what have you seen? Well, that's, of course, a Prince lyric. From some song that he wrote. Yes, but I saw Hindenburg, which this week announced H indenburg Pro version two. It's a brand new version of the editor with new features, including transcription, which is very cool. The transcription with Hinden burg Pro works offline, which is very nice. It deals with English, French, Spanish, German and Danish, weirdly enough. But yeah, it's pretty cool. So I thought, what would be really interesting is to have a quick chat with two folks from Hindenburg, Chris Mottis and Nick Dunkley. To ask them a little bit more about what Hindenburg Pro version two was all about. So I started by asking Nick, what the new features were? The most prominent thing, I guess, for everyone will be that we have transcription in there and now have a manuscript. And I assume we'll get back to that later. But otherwise, we've been doing an overhaul of the UI. So it's it's not just to make it look more fresh and modern. But that was one thing. But also it's more functional now. It has some features in there that make storytelling slightly easier. And so there's a new clipboard and new regions with colors. We've also added a video, not in the sense that you can edit video, but you can you can do your post-production sound for your video. And a few other tit-pictures, getting into all of them. Yeah, well, we might as well get into all of them because I noticed that you are also going to roll out plugins. There are some new plugins which fans of this show particularly will enjoy because I believe that there's a lip smacking or a mouth sm acking plugin, which I don't fully understand. But, you know, some grumpy people say, that's what you need. You need one of those lip sm acking plugins. So so there's a bunch of new plugins on the way, I understand. Yeah, we're trying to make a small suite of the most common voice restoration filters. The point of the plugins are that they would take care of the most common uses that you'll have, as you were saying, mouth smacks, clicks, these kind of things. And what I really like about the plugins, which are in H indenburg, is that the plugins are really easy and simple. So there's a dynamic compressor in there, which has just has one knob. Yes. And you don't need to understand anything about knees or thresholds. It's just a knob and you turn it up and things get more more compressed. Is the plan that these additional plugins will work much the same way? It is indeed. And it's not just the compressor that we design that way. We did the same thing with the noise reduction. And if you remember noise reduction from the olden days for like dinner, do you remember the dinner plugin? I don't. But it had. I got it was really in the good old days. The DNA, it was it was fine. We'd had a thousand different knobs on it and you could try to adjust them. And if you were lucky, you didn't sound too much like a Dalek when you were done with it. So creating plugins that are easy to use is the obvious thing to do, but it's really, really difficult to do it. And just doing the compressor, as we were talking about before, when I was working with Payton about doing this, he was he was saying, well, then we need to have all these knobs and said, no, we want one knob. And that's it. It can't be done. He said, I don't care. I want one knob. I want more compression or less compression. And he was like, but it's never been done. I know I just insisted. I don't care. You just make it work. So we had to figure out a way of making it work. And obviously we'll we'll take the exact same approach to it. It's it's difficult to figure out what the best way to do it is. But we will definitely figure it out. I'm looking forward to playing with those. Also looking forward to playing with the call recorder. So it sounds as if Libsyn has added one of those relatively recently called Libsyn Connect. There's obviously the Revicides and the squad casts of this world. But you are putting a call recorder directly into Hinden burg. Yeah, it will just make things easier having everything integrated. Very cool. And how will how will that work? Will it record at both ends or will it or will it just record great quality on one on one side? It will just record great quality on one side. And we've been going back and forth over this a lot. And one of the issues with the recording locally is you can't monitor it. And if you've ever been in that situation, you might have experience there will be holes in your recording or what have you. But you have no chance of going back and fixing that. So we would like to have a high quality local recording that you can monitor during the recording. Yeah, which makes a bunch of sense. And there's a bunch of other similar pieces of technology that do that sort of thing as well, including clean feed, which just one one and Emmy for their particular tool. So that all makes a bunch of sense. The one thing, though, that, of course, most people are talking about is transcription. What is so special about Hindenburg's transcription? There are lots of other things, other services that that do transcription in various different ways. What's what's the secret source of yours? Well, the secret source here is that. Well, there's many, really. But we could just point to transcription on its own. It's it's built in. You don't have to be online to use the transcription. It's all built in so you have it on an app. So and that was something that was important for us, because we realized that many of our users are mobile in the sense that they travel a lot. So if you are in a boat or a plane, or if you're in the middle of the Saharan desert, what have you? You you can't be dependent on being online. So that was one thing. And it's just sometimes we just work ourselves into a really tight corner because we knew that that would be a situation. We need someone needed to handle that situation properly. And there was no one out there doing it. So we had to figure out a way of doing that. So that was one thing. And as of late, I guess, you know this more than anyone. There have been some red flags when it comes to transcription services, when it comes to privacy. They all work fine, you know, all transcription services nowadays work fine. But if you have sensitive material, are you sure that that material is not being well, surveyed or what the word is going to use? Yeah, I mean, if you're if you're working on something which is against the government, if you're working on just basically an exclusive story that you have that nobody else has, probably what you don't want to do is to upload it to some random service somewhere in the cloud because who knows who's going to actually hear that. And so it's interesting seeing that Hinderberg Pro 2 will just do all of the transcription on your own machine with no internet connection whatsoever. Yeah, we do try. But that's just something that goes on in the background. And the next point of it is obviously that you need to be able to work with it. Now, the version that you've tried out right now is obviously very early days of it. But what we're trying to do is make it as rugged as possible. Anyone who's ever used Hinder berg knows that it just works day in and day out. You can reach your deadlines and working with transcription is a great idea. It always has been. It's nothing new to us that transcription will be a way of working. But it had to reach a level of maturity where we could actually depend on it because it has to work all the time and it has to be fast. It can't just be a gimmick. It has to be a tool. And that's what we're trying to do. Now the technology is there. The transcriptions are actually quite amazing, to be honest. And now we're just fine tuning the tools. So they just work all the time. Yeah, it's a very smart and very cool thing. And, you know, it allows you to edit as if it was a word document, which is a lovely thing. I can't work out how you say that without saying word. If it was a word processing document, maybe. So you can do that. But you can also obviously see the words on the top of each individual piece of audio, which I actually found when I was editing yesterday, I actually found that it was it just makes it much, much easier because you know which bits of audio that you're actually editing. When I first learned to edit on a computer, I was using a piece of software called Sadie and which was, you know, thousands of pounds worth of equipment. And I remember in the day long training, which I had, the thing that I left from that day long training knowing, because it was the first time that I'd ever seen a waveform on a computer screen. The thing that I remember most was somebody telling me that the word fish looks like a fish. It's true, actually. Yeah, which is which is a good thing. Well, well, in Hindenburg, it actually looks like a half a fish. Does it looks like half a fish? That's the voice of Chris, who is you. You're you're what the CEO of the company, Chris. That's what they call me. So let's let's take a step back. What's what's the history of the company? Why? Why does Hindenburg exist and how long has it actually existed? Well, actually, that's that's actually Nick's idea. Originally, he was working on a project related to community radio in Africa, where as part of that development, he needed a piece of audio editing software, which was easy for people to understand without having a whole day of training with Sad ie, for example, which would have to be preceded by a whole day or month of training of how to use a computer, which would have had to be preceded with schooling on how to read and write. And not in the country in Zamb ia as it was, that was not necessarily the case. But stories, they were great and people could tell them. So Nick was looking for a solution for that together with Preben. He developed the basis of what is what is Hindenburg. And a really easy editor for storytellers to use without having to understand the depth of technology behind it. And it turned out that when he showed it to his colleagues or when we showed it to colleagues here in Denmark, they actually were looking for exactly that. And there was actually a basis to build a business, which is when he called me and said, I don't know how to build a business, but I can do this software. Are you interested in helping us? Yeah. And so how long ago was that? 2000. And I think the first time we spoke together was 2009. So 12, 13 years later, who uses it now? Well, it's actually fantastic. You know, first of all, a lot of community radios around the world. We still have that mission to give Hindenburg away to under represented groups around the world. So everything from Africa in Kenya, who we have supported from the beginning, to community radios in South Africa, Botswana, Middle America, Latin America, Nepal. So in that sense, we still serve that purpose and have very high focus on that. But also a lot of public radio stations around the world, particularly in North America and educational institutions. And then moving from there, a lot of famous people like James Cridland and Adam Curry, just name dropping here. And wonderful people around the world who do podcasting. Yeah, which is and it's really found, I think, a niche in terms of, you know, because it's a great speech editor, it's really found a niche in the podcast world where we don't have to worry about editing music and we can just focus on the story, which is a good thing. So Hindenburg Pro version two, how is that going to work from a business point of view? You're not going to give everybody a free update. I mean, I bought mine five, six years ago. So how is it going to work if you currently have a version of Hindenburg Pro already? So historically, we have we sold perpetual licenses for version one point X, so up to version one point nine nine. And this is finally version two. I have to say, I've been trying to get Pavement Nick to agree to putting version two out for about five or six years. But finally, I got to put my foot down and say no. So if you have a perpetual license, you will be able to buy an upgrade to version two at a fairly high discount of pro, it must be said. About a year and a bit ago, we introduced a subscription plan in parallel. A lot of people like a perpetual license because it's a one off. They know what they've paid for it. They don't have to invest again. However, another lot of people like to have a low barrier to entry. They don't want to put $400 on the table and hope that they're going to get their monies worse. So they like the idea of a subscription. And the advantage of subscription is that we can add third party services that we have to pay for like call recording or transcription into it, the package and price it so that it makes sense. And you can't do that with a perpetual license because there's no idea what's going to work. So if you have a subscription at the moment of pro, it'll just roll into pro two and carry on at the base level, which will not include a transcription and call recording. And then we're going to have and we've so far we've gone for the metallurgical values because it's so easy to understand. Bronze, silver, gold. So for a pro silver or pro gold subscription, that will include 20 hours of transcription or 50 hours of transcription and also a certain number of call recording hours. Yeah. Well, that makes a bunch of sense. And I think it is interesting seeing that you offer both by the product, but also you offer an additional monthly fee as well. And I think that that makes perfect sense or rather I should say an alternative monthly fee. And I think that makes a bunch of sense. So yeah. As a perpetual licensee, you will actually also be able to buy access to transcription and call recording as a package on the side. I mean, I've been using I've been using Hinderberg for a long time. Occasionally, you know, I'll go and try some of the others and then I'll come rushing back. So it's great to see Hinderberg pro version two on its way. And and hopefully I look forward to seeing you in some of the big podcast conferences and indeed radio conferences over the next over the next year or year or so. Nick and Chris, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, James. We're having thank you very much, James. Hinderberg pro to all our safety James is a little attack. Yes. They guess that's very that's very impressive. Now, if you've got the translation in Danish, you'll know what that means. There you go. And in case you wondered what the audio of Hinderberg pro to sounds like, then you're listening to it. Descript has also made a number of changes to its redesign. It's included a scene rail, whatever that is, and improvements to the canvas. When you have a look at all of the changes that Descript have made, it's all about video. And there seems to be no work in terms of the audio stuff for Descript. Now, I should point out that there is, as you just heard, something to do with video in the new Hinderberg pro version, too. But it is just purely you can pull in a bit of video, you can edit and play around with the audio and then export the video. It's not a video editor in any way, shape or form. But yeah, I find it very interesting to see Descript has basically gone, you know what, we're just going to we're just interested in the video stuff now. And not really having a look at the audio anymore, which is I think a mistake, but still there we are many long term users myself included do not like the new UI and find the direction, as you said, the video heavy direction that they've taken not to be something that we're really interested. But maybe they're prescient, you know, we have talked about video becoming a bigger play in 23. So maybe they're just seeing it before we are. Who knows? Well, yeah, indeed. And talking about video, YouTube's head of podcasting, Kai Chuck is to be speaking at next week's hot pod summit in Brooklyn in New York, hot pod summit. That's a whole day's conference run by a newsletter. That sounds an interesting idea. Ariel Shapiro will be doing a short interview with Kai Chuck about, as she says, about how YouTube plans to leverage its position as the top streamer of podcasts. Anyway, Kai has spoken at a number of big events last year. But if you remember, we were both at podcast movement ev olutions in LA last year, and we sat very excitedly waiting for Kai Chuck to make some form of announcement about YouTube and podcasts and that's been never game did it. No, I'm going to take a bet with you this time as well, James, he'll say nothing interesting. I think that that's absolutely the case. I have reached out to the PR person and said, if there's a story, we'd love to help you tell it. But yeah, I would doubt that. Now, the folks from Hindenburg are from Denmark, as you probably guessed, and they're not the only Danish people doing exciting things with podcasts, are they, Sam? No, the Vikings are coming, James. The Vikings are coming. It looks like the Danes are entering the UK market. Poddibo is to enter the UK podcast market with more than 20 new shows. Very exciting. Yeah, they've done a lot of big deals. They've worked with a number of different podcast studios in the UK to be able to make those shows available. It was quite a press release that they ended up sending earlier on this week, working with Listen, which is a big radio and podcast maker. Mags Creative, Message Heard, where your friend Jake comes from, Telltale Industries, Tort oise, which is a long-form news organization, Vespucci, and What's the Story Sounds. So they're doing a load of stuff there. And then not just are they expanding into the UK, but they've just announced that they're going to be expanding into Mexico as well in the next couple of months. The company says that the number of users in Mexico who consume audio entertainment in podcast format has increased by 70% in the last four years. Mexico is clearly the place to be. So yeah, Poddibo growing really, really fast. It'd be really good if we could get somebody from Poddibo on the show, Sam. Yeah, I know. They are. Next week, we've got Jake Chud now. I've probably said that probably wrong, but he's the global head of studios for Podd ibo. So yeah, I reached out to Jake and he said, "Yeah, I'll speak to you next week and we'll tell you all about our plans for the UK." That's fantastic. I remember having a chat with Jake a number of years ago, and he was very excited about starting to work at Poddibo. And I was telling him all about the Copenhagen underground system, which is which you can sit at the front and pretend that you're driving the trains. It's quite fun. You do that on the DLR. Now, Mexico, hey, maybe we should go to Mexico as well, James. Who knows? Yeah, that'd be nice. Maybe we should run some form of a conference there. Yeah, that would be good. Now, James, you've got some trade secrets to spill. Come on, spill the tea, as the kids say. It sounds as if we've got quite a lot of trade secrets. Yes. So there was one of the original podcasts. Dave Weiner and Adam Curry produced a podcast called Trade Secrets, which started to run in September 2004. It ran until January 2005. It is a fascinating listen. And Dave contacted me and said,"You should listen to Trade Sec rets because it goes into how podcasting got its name." And I said, "Brilliant. Where is Trade Secrets then? How do I go and have a listen?" And it turned out that it wasn't available in an RSS feed and hasn't been for some time. So imagine my slight nervous ness when I said to Dave,"Well, why don't I write an RSS feed for it?" Saying to the person that invented RSS feeds. Why don't I write an RSS feed for it? And so, yes, you'll find that available now. If you're using a podcast index app, a new podcast app, then just search for Trade Sec rets. And if you're not, then you'll find a link in the pod news newsletter for how you can listen on your legacy podcast app, whether that's Apple podcasts or Pocket Casts or Overcast or whatever. And, yeah, it's got full transcripts and the podcast people tag and all kinds of stuff in there. It's a great listen. So really worthwhile having a listen. And possibly an exclusive for this very, very podcast. Dave Weiner also had another podcast, which was called Morning Coffee Notes, which lasted for significantly longer, has significantly more episodes in there. And I'm looking forward to doing exactly the same with Morning Coffee Notes as well. So I'm busy putting those through the transcriber and everything else. There's a wonderful Morning Coffee Notes where he's sitting watching a storm. And all you can hear is thunder and lightning in the background. And he keeps on pausing for it because he knows when it's going to happen. And it's a great listen, great listen. So really looking forward to that. So if you want to hear a little bit of history, then punch up Trade Secrets in your new podcast app. Well done, James. Congratulations. And also, just on a side note, Dave Weiner pointed out that XML, which is the underlying technology for RSS, was 25 years old last Friday. Yes. So happy birthday XML. Said no one ever, but I just have. So yes, so that's a good thing. In People News, Seb Renne has been hired as executive head for listener commercial. He looks as if he's probably just been working at a real estate company. He looks very, very posh, way too posh for a media person. Anyway, he's going to be driving the commercial strategy for the Australian Radio and Podcast app. The reason why he looks so smart is that he used to be chief investment officer for Group M in Australia and New Zealand. So it'll be interesting to see what happens there. My understanding is that I think they're trying to sell listener as an app in other countries, which will be interesting, which of course is what I Heart does. Totally interesting seeing what Seb does there. Matt Medeiros started a new role this week, friend of the show and also a supporter. He is now WordPress community evangelist for Gravity Forms. He had been with Castos. Audio has also appointed a person called Tim Ackerman as chief financial officer. Audio is a AI company that deals with audio and that sort of thing. And also Scotty Pitbull Myers has joined Gemini 13 as vice president. Sorry, who's that? That's a great name. And special projects. Yes, Scotty Pitbull Myers. You just don't want to go into a meeting with MD and negotiate. Yeah, you don't want to. Although I did take a look at his photograph and he doesn't entirely look like a Pitbull. But anyway, he's joined Gemini 13, which is a really big podcast company or wants to be a really big podcast company in New York. It's also got offices in Sydney, apparently, which is all very nice. And he is looking after a couple of new hires that they've made. They're making radio shows and also podcasts. So there you go. If you're looking for a job, Pod News has podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world and they're free to post. It will take just two minutes to add a new role at podnews. net/jobs. The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review. I love this section. rss.com, friends of the show, now support the podcast TXT for ownership and verification. I know that Alberto is out there when the first conversation started. So congratulations to them for now implementing it. Yes, it looks very good. Podtext.ai. It's one of a slew of new services. Slew, there's a good word. That searches between podcast transcripts and allows you to share clips. And it's worthwhile having a look at, although I did find it funny on Y Combinator, which is one of the many places where I look for news. The author posts there, "My employer will fire me if they find out about this project." So, you know, oops. So let's hope that nobody finds out who he is. He calls himself a non-builder. A non-builder. I thought he came out to do my extension last week. Yes. And there's also another one called podsearch.page. There's another one in there. kailualabs.com. They're all over the place. And I think probably one of the reasons why they're all over the place is that, of course, it's really easy in terms of whisper to do all of these high-quality transcripts and stuff. But interesting seeing that. Now, RSS Blue announced this week, which caught my attention, that they now support the KeyS end protocol with an extension called dot well-known lookup schema, which means that basically you can now just put in the lightning address. So what's yours, James? James, is it james@githolby.com? Yeah, james@githolby.com will work or james@crid.net. And yes, if you just type that in, then it automatically grabs that through a dot well-known config file, which is a really clever plan. Yeah, so I thought I'd reach out to Dovidas Jokas, who is the CEO and founder of R SS Blue, to ask him more about what he was doing with this. But also to find out, why did he want to start a new hosting company? Weren't there enough hosting companies already out there? It came from the realization and a sort of fear of what is happening with the podcasting industry. So a few years ago, I started my own website, I started my own blog, and I realized this is this wonderful technology called RSS, where I can just put anything in it, any updates, and they will be received by all my subscribers without any middlemen. But of course, no one is using RSS anymore. But if you look at 2000s, you had all the blogs utilizing RSS, people knew what this technology does. Twitter was based on RSS. But over time, this thing got centralized. It got removed from all the social media sites, and there appeared these middle men who controlled the information and its flow. I think we don't appreciate enough how amazing it is that this technology still powers podcasting. But I also feel we should be vigilant in a sense that this may not always be the case. And my goal with RSS Blue was to make RSS the best possible experience for both podcasters and listeners so that we could have the best possible solution for everyone. So that Apple or Spotify cannot just offer a better product using their close source solutions. So when I first heard about the idea of podcasting 2.0, all of these new amazing features, transcripts, chapters, value for value, I said that's amazing. Because if we can extend RSS using these new standards, it really offers a much superior experience compared to what companies like Spotify or Apple can offer at the moment. So that was the genesis of it. When you started putting out R SS Blue, what was the business plan that you're going to offer? Hosting at a certain price, you're going to offer RSS extended features. How did it kick off? So from the very inception, RSS Blue was founded with podcast ing 2.0 in mind. So when we launched in the summer of 2022, we already had things like transcripts and chapters supported. So people could, at an affordable price, use our service to already utilize those new podcasting features. How have you found the adoption of users? Still an uphill learning curve. What's value for value? What's a digital wallet? What's a sat? Of course, you're going to have support calls and you're going to have users going,"Well, yes, I just want to host my podcast and have it on Apple." What's all this other stuff that you keep asking me to do? Is that the general gist or do you have people going, "No, I'm an early adopter and this is so cool." So the amazing thing is that these new features were one of the main attractions for people to come use our service. So most of our users are people coming from other hosting companies where those features did not exist. Or people coming from Sound Cloud, where they feel the feature set is just not complete. And you come to RSS Blue and you have all these features presented in a very simple user interface and also at a relatively low price so they can use it right away. And of course, there is difficulty often at explaining some of these new things. Value for value is I think the greatest example of this where you have terms like lighting addresses, note addresses, key send, custom value, custom key. What does that mean? So one of the main challenges has been how to make it accessible to people who don't really care about the underlying technology and they want to utilize the benefits of this technology, that is the direct relationship between podcasters and listeners. So at the moment, RSS Blue has the best user interface out of all podcast hosting companies for dealing with value for value. All people have to do is enter their lighting address and we will fetch all the details automatically. So this works with Albi, this works with Fountain, this works with V4V.app, which is a website for Hive accounts. And in fact, it will work with any provider that supports lightning key send protocol. That's really cool because that was a new schema that came out. Who came up with it? Was it you or was it somebody else? How did it come about? So key send is still a protocol in works where it is being actively developed. And there have been a few early adopters, so namely Albi and F ountain, where they essentially enabled everyone who has wall with them to utilize this protocol. And then of course embed the addresses in the RSS feeds at the hosting providers. So even if it's not Fountain or Albi, if you support the scheme, we will get your details automatically. It's very cool because that overcomes what the user doesn't want to do, as you said earlier, finding out all the long strings that they have to put in. And of course that injects the idea of error because the more you have to put in numerical numbers, somebody's missed off one number, then they go, oh, it doesn't work, blah, blah, blah. I've seen this before and I've talked about this before when we had to learn about HTTP and what's a URL and how do you find a domain name. And it was all new terminology. And now everybody in the world talks about it as if it's a standard common vocabulary. And I suspect that people will say, oh, what's your digital wallet address? I'll look it up for you. Will be common and it'll just populate and it's done. What other features have you got planned? So one of the main features we currently support include transcripts, chapters, the value tag. We have things like TXT tags, which is a way for podcasters to verify ownership. So for example, if you want to prove that you are the owner of the feed, you don't actually need to keep your email address in that feed, which helps avoid spam. But you can simply embed some string of letters that someone else gave it to you to essentially prove that, yes, I am in control of this feed. So in the future, we would love to support the person tag. I feel the live feature of podcasting 2.0 is incredibly exciting. So for that, I would love to actually have the infrastructure to do the live recordings within the artist's blue infrastructure, as opposed to just copying and pasting some link to the live recording. I think as a host, if you can provide them with an HLS or shoutcast server as a value added service to what you're doing, that would be amazing. I've said it before that you can make this your premium offering compared to your standard, because not everyone's going to do a live item tag stroke live podcast. So you could say, look, Mr and Mrs, standard podcast, you can come to RSS Blue and we'll give you things like transcript s and persons and wallets. But if you want to do more sexy stuff and go live, then there's my premium version. And you can time share my shout cast or HLS server. Actually, HLS is really cool. I was listening to Adam and Dave because you can do a rewind on a real live. And I'm like, whoa, that's so good. That's the geek in me coming out. So that's brilliant. One of the things that you are also, I mentioned you're a doctor at your PhDs in what, please remind everyone or tell everyone. So during my PhD, I investigated the efficiency of machine learning hardware and how feasible it would be to use that. Okay. So you're an AI expert, you know a lot about that area and cybersecurity and everything else. And that's what you do at the UCL in London. Where do you see AI fitting into podcasting then? So there's a lot of hype in this area, but I think whisper is one of the most wonderful examples of how AI can benefit us because essentially now anyone can just download the open source models from open AI and transcribe any audio they have better than most of the services that offer this for a very high price. So this essentially democrat izes this kind of service. So I hope many of these kind of technologies could be applied to other aspects of podcasting. And let's say when you have things like transcripts, it increases your efficiency by orders of magnitude. So I just saw the post a few days ago, this program called, I believe Mac Whisper, which is essentially built for macOS integrating the whisper model. So essentially provides a very nice, easy to use graphical interface that utilizes the whisper model. It transcribes your audio. And when you have the transcriptions, you essentially have all the text that is searchable. It also makes it easier for you to do things like chapters. You don't need to listen to the audio to even know where the timestamp starts and where it ends. So these kinds of improvements, I believe, will make it much, much more efficient for podcasters and they will rely on these external services to do these kinds of tasks for them. Is there anything else that you think, given, you know, you're deep in the weeds with RSS as well, that you see coming down the track that you're excited for? So one of the things we also have at RSS Blue is the implementation of the medium tag, which is probably one of the simplest tags, which it essentially tells you what kind of podcast do you have, because we podcast, we usually think of them as audio shows. But in reality, podcast is any RSS feed that has enclosures in it. So it could be a show, it could be an audio book, maybe it's a music clip. And one of the things we support is music podcasts. So we have a few of those at R SS Blue. And I feel that's very exciting. It's a new way for musicians to distribute their music and get value from their listeners. And one of the challenges I believe at this very moment is how could musicians utilize the power of value for value to its full extent. Because we know that people like Adam Curry reiterate that to get value, you need to ask for a value. And that is difficult for musicians because listeners of music do not really want to be interrupted in the middle of a song to be asked for value. So I believe there is a lot of potential on the podcast spl itter side to create user interfaces for music podcasts, where it makes it very easy for listeners to give value back to the music creators. The question I get is how do we convince users, and that's not just RSS Blue, but as an industry, that actually podcasting isn't a free to consume medium that actually you need to pay for podcasts. How do we convince them to do that? I guess it's a difficult question because we have a lot of great examples of how text content has been monetized in the last few years. If you look at Subst ack, that has been probably the best examples of how you can monet ize content. But at the same time, if we want to keep the values of value for value, we don't want to essentially close this content from the people who don't pay this. So I believe it is the challenge, essentially, for the podcasters to communicate to their listeners of how useful this kind of feature could be to essentially help them develop the content that the listeners want. It's also important to communicate the value of this to the podcas ters themselves. So it's also the task of us, the hosting companies, because I feel one of the features, one of the qualities that is underappreciated of value for value is the feedback mechanism. Podcasting has for a very long time relied on download statistics, essentially, measure how well the podcast has performed. Even at Art as Blue, we have the support for OP3 analytics, and that's great. But downloads do not have that much meaning if the listeners do not contribute to the pod caster in a meaningful way. So value for value is just an amazing way to know that the things you create, they matter because the listeners actually value that. Yeah, it comes from, for me, it comes from Kevin Kelly's book, The Inevitable, where he wrote the blog about the 1000 True Fans, and that's where I think, apart from Adam Curry's use of value for value, is where I think the original concept of creating value from your true fans or receiving value from your true fans. F ountain is a great example of how maybe this could be done. So I met with Oscar Mary of F ountain a few months ago, and one of the things I communicate to him is how difficult it is to really understand the whole terminology of value for value, lighting payments, it's just so difficult. And even to get Sat oshi's into your fountain wallet, it was very essentially difficult to give back to the creators. So I feel they've done great job at making this much simpler, where you can essentially buy Satoshi's within the app, and then after that directly payback to the podcasters. So I feel value for value in this form provides a way for many of the app developers to be part of this whole ecosystem and actually get value from it. Yeah, it's in the terminology of taking fees, a percentage of the transaction. So yeah, that is the only way. And I think that's why I think Oscar and Mitch and others are very keen to get value for value, because that is the only way I think app developers are going to get any monetization within this ecosystem. So RSS Blue, it's not even a year old now. How big is the team? It is RSS Blue, you at the moment are just blue. Yes, it is just one person. Everything that you do, you're the Cody, you're the customer support person, you're everything as well. Do you think you're going to expand the team? Are you going to go for external funding? How do you think you want to grow RSS Blue? So at the moment, RSS Blue is growing organ ically at a pace where I can still handle all the customer support requests. But in the future, once there is a need for essentially providing the best quality service to the podcas ters, which I alone wouldn't be able to do, I feel that's the time when I will look probably at external funding and see how we can grow this even further. Dov, if you ask for people listening, where can they go and find more about RSS Blue? It's very simple. Just go to RSSBlue.com. And if they need to find you on Twitter or MasterDome, where would they find you? So people can find me on podcastindex.social. If you just type in my name, Dovidas, you will find me on podcastind ex.social, where we have a lot of great conversations on the technology of podcasting 2.0. Thanks a lot, Dovidas. Thank you, Sam. Dovidas, Joksass from RSS Blue. And as one podcast hosting company starts and gets well known, another one ends up closing pod tricks. If you're hosted on pod tricks, then you've not got long because that's going to close on February the 28th. It's owned by Mark Binder. It was launched in February last year, although you're not hosted on pod tricks, are you? Because I took a look in the podcast index. I could find two shows hosted by pod tricks. One of them was theirs. One of them was from a company that they had press released. The pod news sample only has one of them. And I did find an article saying that it was earning $200 in monthly recurring revenue in October. So it's kind of no surprise that that is to close, but to close it will. And it'll end up closing on February the 28th. Do you think that we'll see more podcast hosting companies closing this year, Sam? Yeah, I think there will be an M&A. I think there will be those that support new standards. I think Todd called it correctly. We'd be calling him tags, but features are a better name. And I think as more features are added by hosts, I think the competition is going to start to ramp up a bit. And I think people are going to start to drop away those that don't add it. Yeah, I think so. I think if you're hosting with a very capable podcast host like Omni Studio that doesn't support any of the podcasting 2.0 tags, then at some point you will ask yourself, you know, I really need support for X, Y and Z. And this company doesn't do that. And so therefore, and captiv ates the same. And so therefore, you know, well, what should we do? We're better go somewhere else. And so I really do see it as being a bit of an issue. And I think that Todd has got this absolutely right. I was listening to Todd Cochran from Blueberries podcast while I was walking the dog this morning. And he was saying, and there is an element of he would say this, wouldn't he? But he was saying that over the last couple of weeks, he has been importing more podcasts than he ever has. And one would assume that it's got something to do with the new focus that that company has on supporting the podcast names pace. So well done to him. Now let's move around the world, James. Now, keeping in mind out of the gutter, what did the majority of Americans do when they listened to podcasts? No, it's not that. It's household chores. That's what they're doing. Commuting as well is second. 42%. I think the household chores is I think 49% from memory. It's not falling asleep, which most people assume that it is falling asleep is actually quite low in terms of that chart. That was new research done by you, Gov. Staying in America, Troy Price wrote an impression of what he learned from Podfest in Orlando, which is well worth a little read. But what he did love again, Todd Cochran, here he is again. He's getting lots of mentions this week, isn't he? He said he went to his presentation on the podcast 2.0 and he wants to jump in on value for value. He sees it as much more a way for him to support his podcast than through advertising or sponsorship. He really liked what Todd had to say. Yeah, which is nice. So, and I know that Todd is talking about podcast ing 2.0 in every single conference that he is talking at this year. In Q8STC, which I think stands for Saudi Telecom Company. Anyway, it's a telecoms company there, I think it's the number three. They ran a workshop about podcasting. So, interesting seeing the Arab states again doing more around podcasting in South Africa as well. Radio isn't dying, but an academic says podcasts are growing. South Africa is a really interesting market because mobile data is inordinately expensive. The South African Telco, the main Telco just charges so, so much. And so, podcasting has a real issue there. It's one of the reasons why I keep on wittering on to anybody that will listen that we should be encoding everything that we do as really low bit rate opus files that people can choose if they want to to end up downloading through the alternate enclosure tag. But anyway, that might be useful for South Africa, but certainly podcasts are growing in that country, which is always nice to end up seeing. Zipping back up to Ireland, the number one Irish podcast, the two Johnny's have a festival called Pints in a Field and it's sold out, which is great. They've also sold out their very first UK show at London's Hackney Empire. So, yeah, they are going on the road. And lastly, of course, it's in February, their fifth anniversary. So, I can't say I've actually heard the two Johnny's podcast, have you? They ended up doing, they ended up being offered a show on the RTE, on the public service broadcaster in the country. I think it was on 2FM. And I think the show lasted for about two weeks before they had managed to offend so many different people. Were they eff ing and jeffing as well? I'm not sure they were effing and jeffing, but they were probably, I don't know, saying something terrible about the Virgin Mary or something like that. Yes, which is no good. But apparently, they're very, very funny. I covered a story yesterday sent to me by Matt Cundle, friend of the show. And this was about, I just thought was really interesting. It's a company called Obie and Axe, which is a company that makes podcasts for people. They made a set of podcasts for the Toronto Police. It's called 24 Shades of Blue. It's a really simple sounding podcast. It's just an interview podcast. It sounds all right. It's got a nice sort of, you know, little bit of music right at the beginning. And then it's just an interview. And they charge $330,000 for that, or rather they have over the last three years. So still more than $100,000 for a podcast that they actually host on anchor, which is free, which is a thing. But yeah, so a CBC investigation has asked the right questions and got the right answers about how much was this podcast? How many people is it actually reaching only about $ 92,000? Is it good value for money? Well, there's a question. But great seeing a little bit of digging by the CBC in terms of this, in terms of this, you know, Copag anda type show. I think they've been stitched up. I think they need to open up a case file because they've been stolen from. That's a bad one there. Finally, in Asia, what is one of the most developed podcast markets in all of East and Southeast Asia? James, you've been doing it again. What have you been up to? Yeah, podcasting in Thailand is one of the most developed podcast markets. It's a fascinating country to have a look into podcasting. The top two podcasts are horror podcasts, and the rest of them, according to the Spotify charts for January, are all about learning. So again, really interesting looking at different countries in East and Southeast Asia and looking at what individual countries are all about. It's part of a series that we've been running in pod news over the last couple of months around podcast markets in East and Southeast Asia. That's now complete if you want to go and take a good read of all of those. And what's going to happen next is we're going to start diving deeper into each country. We've also got articles coming up about China and about India as well. I wouldn't have imagined we've got very many listeners in China because I think you need to be a special podcast to get into China, but certainly in India, maybe we've got quite a few. I should have a look at the Buzz sprout stats. They would tell me, wouldn't they? Yeah, and also... But I do think there's an awful lot of really interesting stuff going on in the Asian podcast market. So well worth taking a look at that. Fancy a trip to Kuala Lumpur? Yes, a trip to Kuala Lumpur. That would be nice. Well, I will be there actually at the beginning of September. Radio Days Asia is there every year, at least has been there every year when we've been able to be there. And so there may be some podcasty stuff going on there as well this year, but as there was last year. But who knows? A couple of other upcoming events. Radio Days North America is happening in Toronto in early June. I will be one of those speakers. I'm talking about great technology from podcasting that Radio Station can use. So that should be quite fun. I've literally booked my flights this morning. So that's good. It's in early June and it's right in front of our very own event, which is called Pod News Live, which is not Todd Co chran and Rob Greenley, us doing this show on a stage because you can't fill an entire day doing that. No, it's going to be a great conference. More details of that in just a minute later on in this very podcast. Also, the Infinite Dial US is going to be presented as a free webinar on March the 2nd. It's a really big piece of research with that they're doing on March the 2nd and not a week later at Podcast Movement Ev olutions. But still, that's Edison Research for you. The podcast consumption figure from that data dropped slightly last year. I'm hoping it's going to go up this year. Also going on, of course, Podcast Movement Evolutions starting on March the 7th. March the 4th is PodFest Cairo. If you want to go to that, that's in the American University in the city. The New Zealand podcasting event, which is scheduled for May the 13th, although Auckland has not had an awful lot of good luck recently with the weather. A few other things, the German podcast awards are open for entry. The publisher podcast awards have just announced their nominations, which should be very exciting. Wednesday, April the 26th. There's an early bird code here, early bird 20. You can get 20% off all ticket types. Is that because you're thinking about going? Yeah, I got an invite yesterday. So yeah, I'm going. Yes. Oh, very nice. Are we on the shortlist then? No, no. Well, I am. I'm on the shortlist. I'm on the shortlist for everything. I'm five foot seven. No, I don't think we've not entered. That would be the key criteria for getting on any shortlist. We have to enter first, James, and we haven't done that yet. Yes, indeed, which is kind of important. And of course, the podcast show London, which is towards the end of May, which I've also just booked my flights for. I have booked an awful lot of flights. And yes, I've not really enjoyed the flight booking. I'm flying Air Canada with one of these flights. Air Canada, it's the airline for people that like the colour beige. Anyway, there are more events both paid for and free at Pod News, virtual events or events in a place with people. If you're organising something, tell the world about it. It's free to be listed at podnews.net/events. Booster gram corner corner corner on the Pod News Weekly Review. Yes, it's our favourite time of the show. It's Boostergram Corner. Loads of boosts. So thank you to you if you have sent a ton of boosts over Nick 1000 sat. He says bullish on Jordan Har binger. Yeah, I was a great interview last week. If you didn't hear it, it's in the Pod News extra feed. That was a fantastic interview. 40 something minutes. I've had lots of people saying how much they got out of that particular interview. So that was certainly a good thing, Sam. Thank you. Yeah. Dave Jones has given us 5150 sat. I'm sure that has a significance. We'll have Nathan Garthright on the podcast 2.0 show this week. It'll be a fun time talking about all of his projects. Yeah, Nathan's a very intelligent guy. And I spoke to him a couple of weeks back, actually. So yes, good listen. Friday nights with Dave and Adam. Yes, I'm K airyn from the mere mortals podcast, a row of ducks, double two, double two sats. I don't know why I said double two, double two. Anyway, nice selection of boost s you have there. Picking up some steam, he says. And he also says great chat with Jordan. He sent a bo ob sat, 008. Great chat with Jordan. Not the page three model Jordan, but Jordan Harbinger, obviously. Definitely worth listening to the whole conversation. Might even be worth enabling value for value there as well. You would have gotten some extra s ats from me. Oh, yeah, value for value on the podcast. Use extra podcast. That's a good idea. I should do that. I'll go and do that now. Gene Bean, 1000 sats, a plus one to not calling likes zaps. Oh, yes. Yes, this was your silly idea. Wasn't it? No, no, this is the Nostalot. Right. Can I point out nothing to do with me voting for it? It's just I read that that's what they've decided to call the equivalent of likes on Nostalot zaps. Yes. So I'm just reporting the news. They blame the messenger. Well, they won't be on podcast ing. Gene Bean adds, zapping someone has negative connot ations, not to mention the UX agreed. He's also sent a row of ducks, double two, double two. I'm just going to say again. I really enjoyed the show this week and SRTN or sorting, as I've been calling them, 250 sats. And they have sent a message in their booster ground, which I'm imagining is supposed to be read in a Yoda voice and says, the path through sometimes conflicting news. I don't really know what he's talking about. I don't know either. Right. But if you do get value from what we do, the Pod News Weekly review is separate from Pod News. Sam and I share everything from it. We really appreciate your support. You can become a power supporter, weekly.podnews.net. You can subscribe in Apple Podcasts and apple.co/podnews. You get no dynamically inserted ads if you do that. Or you can support us with sats by hitting the boost button in your podcast app. Like all of these fine people have, if you don't have one of those, then podnews.net/newpodcastapps will help you find a new app. You've found some podcasts you want to talk about, haven't you, Sam? Yeah, a friend of the show, James, but launched his new podcast, Business Marriage. It's from Ph onic Media. It's currently number 11 in the UK charts, and he's done a great job of pre-setting that up. And he's going to be doing a post about what he did to help get his podcast rated straight away out the gate, up the charts. So that'll be an interesting read. He says, "Let's be real. Business is hard, marriage is hard, and combined they are double effing hard." So we hope this is the show. It pulls back the curtain and maybe even gives some useful business scale-up insights too. James has got a great track record. He's launched 166 other podcasts, apart from this one being his own. So yeah, I'm looking forward to his report that says what he did and all the different tricks he did to get his podcast ranked in the charts at number 11 so quickly. Wow. Well, there you go. Lemonade Media has launched a new podcast with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, aiming to learn life lessons from women over 70. Louis-Dreyfus ends up saying,"In our culture, older women are rarely seen or heard. What a shame. We're missing out on the wisdom and experiences of a huge portion of the population." Now, Sherilyn Star key emailed me and said, "Glad to hear of Julia Louis-Dreyfus' new show. Would you be able to give a shout out about my show, 50 Women Over 50? I'm not a famous actor, but I'm working hard on my independent podcast." Well, good for you. So you should be. So if you don't fancy 70 Women Over 70, I don't think it's going to be called that. But if you don't fancy the Women Over 70 podcast, how about the Women Over 50 podcast? It's called 50 Women Over 50. It's hosted on Simplecast. Thank you, Sherilyn, for your email. Now, the BBC have a business podcast called The Bottom Line. And if you missed it last week, it was a good one. They had Jack Daven port from Goldhanger Podcast, Sam Chattiba from ACAST, and the media analyst Rebecca McGr ath from Mintel. It was a really good listen. So highly recommend going back and listen to that one. Yes, friend of the show, Ariel Nissenblatt has launched a new podcast called The Podcast Trailer podcast. It's her and Tim Vieig as. It's immediately charted on Apple Podcast at number 73. Maybe James Burke could have been helping. Get that even higher. Yes. Anyway, it's a really clever idea. It's basically playing a podcast trailer and helping people understand what that show is all about and talking to the creators and understanding whether that show went anywhere and got anywhere in the charts and stuff like that. So worth a listen to The Tra iler Park. You can also find Pod News' own new podcast trailers podcast, which you'll find at podnews.net/trailers. And last but not least, from PodBible, Distraction Pieces is celebrating 500 episodes this week. In the beginning before PodBible, there was Distraction Pieces. And now PodBible co-founder Sc roobius Pipp, what a name, has released his 500th episode. Yes, it's a tremendous podcast actually. Scroobius Pipp is a very good podcaster and completely understands this. He's spoken to all kinds of people and you'll find Distraction Pieces in your podcast app. Anything exciting happening for you this week, Sam? Yeah, well, it's exciting for us this week, James. So I posted on LinkedIn after we had agreed that we are going to be doing a number of events, which we've sort of hinted at throughout this podcast. And so we've got a few more details on it. The first event we are going to be doing is on the 13th of June in Manchester at the Larry Theatre. We're really excited because we've got the BBC, we've got Captivate there, but also an audio always. But I'm glad to say Kate Cocker has said that she's going to come along. She's the host of the award- winning Everyday Positivity. Michael Carr and his team from Crowd Network will be there. Sophie Hind and the MD of Voiceworks, she's going to be joining us. We'll be announcing many more names as well. So yeah, I'm very excited that the agenda is beginning to look great. We'll be telling you more about how you can get tickets soon as well. Yes, indeed. And you'll find a little bit more information at podnews.net/live. We are also doing an event in London in September on a date that we haven't yet announced, but we will be shortly. And you can expect Davidas Jogsas, our guest today. He'll be joining us down in London alongside Naomi Meller, who is founder of the International Women's Awards. And many, many other people as well will continue to announce more speakers and where you can buy your tickets. But for more information, you can just go off to podnews.net/live and discover more information about that. Yeah, and we also, this week, James, we are confirmed, aren't we, for podcast movement in Vegas to do a live show, this show in fact. Yes, this very show will be live at podcast movement in Las Vegas, which I'm looking forward to. Now, what our plan is, is that we need some people to come and watch it, because otherwise it'll be very dull for Sam and I to sit in an empty room and record a podcast. So, yes, so if you wanted to come along and watch that, then who knows, there may be beers and something exciting to come once we've ended up doing that. Can I put it out there? We need a sponsor for beers. So if anyone's interested in sponsoring the beers for our live event, please let us know. I thought pod fans were sponsoring the beers. Wasn't pod fans sponsoring the beers? Am I doing it now? I tell you, in all seriousness, I tell you who should be sponsoring at least some of the beers. And he's already paid us quite enough for that, and that's Adam Curry. So Adam Curry has sent us an awful lot of sats and stuff like that. So we will spend some of Adam's money that he's already sent us on the podcasting community. And yes, I've got a plan for where we'll be and we should probably organise an exact date and time for drinks at podcast movement ev olutions. But I think it should be somewhere which at least has something to do with British people. It sadly won't be in the British pub in the Riviera, because the Riviera Hotel is now no more and is just a car park. So we'll have to find somewhere else. But I think I know exactly where that'll be. Talking about pod fans, how is pod fans going? Great. Got loads more things completed off the final task list. So we're about two weeks away from the Alpha and we are launching a little podcast called FanZone, which is a five minute weekly podcast about new platform features. I didn't really want a WordPress blog or anything like that. I just thought, hey, we're a podcast app. Why don't we rela unch a podcast app then to tell people about what we do each week. So that's what we're doing. It's called FanZone. So keep a look at that. Very good. I'm sure that that will be in a podcast app near you and probably always best to suggest that you go and use a new podcast app for that, podnews.net/newpodcastapps. Now, James, what's been happening for you this week? Well, I've been booking an in ordinate amount of flights because I am going all over the place over the next couple of weeks. I've just got a sog in my head. I'm leaving on a jet plane. That's all I could think of. I'm a quantus. After not seeing me for the last four months or so, I'm delighted that I still exist. So I am in Sydney on Tuesday the 28th and Wednesday the first 28th February, obviously in the first of March. Obviously, I'm going to the IAB Australia Audio Summit 2023. I just fancied it. So I'm popping down there. So that should be fun. If you are a Sydney Sider, it would be lovely to see you. I've got some time on the first. So that would be good. And then, of course, podcast movement evolutions coming up after that. I'm actually arriving a little bit early to podcast movement evolutions. I'm arriving on the Sunday night. So if anybody would like to catch up either on the Sunday or on the Monday, then that would be a super good thing. I will be half asleep. I should point that out. But at the very least, I should probably exist from that point of view. So basically, I've been planning all of those things and also flights to Prague in the Czech Republic, which I should call Czechia these days, and a hideous flight, which I'm doing. I'm going to the NAB show, which I know that Rob and Todd will both be at. So I'm going to the NAB show, then flying from there to an event in Berlin that Spotify is organizing. And I've just been booking that. And that was a return ticket to Las Vegas and then a return ticket from Las Vegas to Berlin or something hideous. It's just going to be a nightmare. So not much looking forward to that. But yes, I've been doing all of that. That's been good fun. And I've also recorded an episode for Courtney Kossak's new podcast, Podcast Bestie, where I think I mentioned fishing chips about 20 times to make a point. So the question is, how much of that will be edited out? You'll find out when that podcast appears. Do you know fishing chips is not English? I did not know that fishing chips is not English. Why is it not English? So it's an imported food. So the fish comes from Portugal. It was a Jewish person who brought battered fish to Britain. And the chips came from a Jewish person from Belgium. And they formed a restaurant in London and sold a fish and chips. So fish and chips, by the way, is not British. You'll be telling me next that chicken tikka masala isn't a proper Indian dish? No, I am going to tell you that. Yeah, try and order that in India. See what happens, mate. I will tell you one last bit of trivia. The word curry was mistranslated by the British. Curry actually just means dish. The Indian word is karai. And the British heard that, karai, karai. And then came back to Britain and said, oh, I'll have a curry. And that's what it means. It doesn't mean anything else, apart from dish. Well, well, there we are. Well, you know, and there I was thinking that I was awfully clever talking about fish and chips and, you know, being a being a Brit and everything else. And obviously, I'll, you know, sorry, I wasn't, I wasn't doing anything, you know, about pizza, you know, from Italy or anything else. Or I know it's not. Anyway, let's move on. That's it for this week, isn't it? It is indeed. You can give us feedback using email at weekly@ podnews.net or send us a boost to ground, which we love. If your podcast app doesn't support boost, then grab a new app from podnew s.net/newpodcastapps. Yes, our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila Dee. We should get some more voiceovers done because we've got some more features now. And we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnews.net. Tell your friends and grow the show and support us. And support us. The Podnews Weekly Review will return next week. Keep listening.[Music][BLANK_AUDIO]