James C: 0:00

It's Friday, the 19th of May 2023.

Jingles: 0:04

The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News weekly review with James Kirkland and Sam Sethi.

James C: 0:14

On James Cridland, the editor of Pod News.

Sam Sethi: 0:16

And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of Pop Fans

James C: 0:19

In the chapters today, The New York Times has launched their new podcast app. Or is

Sam Sethi: 0:23

Apple,

James C: 0:23

it a podcast app, Spotify,

Sam Sethi: 0:24

Spotify

James C: 0:25

as it launches in the UK and Ireland?

Sam Sethi: 0:27

and Ireland,

James C: 0:28

The US podcast

Sam Sethi: 0:28

the US

James C: 0:29

ad

Sam Sethi: 0:29

podcast.

James C: 0:29

market has grown. It's now worth $1.8 billion. Captivate Launch the Creator suite and like London buses, a fountain pod friend and pod fans all launch new versions. Plus

Martin Mouritzen: 0:43

Hello. My name is Morrison. Morrison. And I'll be on later to talk about the new version of Hot Frank 2.0.

Mark Asquith: 0:49

Hey, this is Mark Asquith, managing director here at Captivate, and I'll be here later to talk about our brand new monetization tools for the serious independent podcaster.

Oscar Merry: 0:59

Hi, I'm Oscar Murray, and I'll be on later to talk about the latest Fountain 0.7 release.

James C: 1:05

they will. This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzz Sprout. Last week, 3769 people started a podcast with Buzz Sprout Podcast hosting made Easy with powerful tools, remarkable customer support, and now you can advertise your product or service with Buzz Sprout ads. Even in this podcast, if you wanted to get started at Buzz Sprout dot com slash ads. And with Pod News Live where podcasting connects in Manchester in June. Get your tickets today. Pod news, dot net slash live.

Jingles: 1:37

Pod news lie where the podcast industry connects. Get your tickets now at Pod News start PCMag slash live.

Sam Sethi: 1:47

Sir James, let's kick off. I've got an apology to make first in my

James C: 1:51

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:52

early kick off today. Last week I interviewed Sharon Taylor from Triton Digital,

James C: 1:56

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:56

and I inadvertently said that the podcast namespace was now the Podcast Standards Project. I basically said yes to a question that I shouldn't have said yesterday. It was a slip of the tongue, and I was 1,000% wrong. So apologies to Adam and

James C: 2:11

The

Sam Sethi: 2:11

Dave

James C: 2:12

pod father is very disappointed in you, Mr. Sethi.

Sam Sethi: 2:15

and I know the podcast namespace is very much alive. It's well, I'm running with scissors. So my apologies to Adam and Dave. And the Podcast Standards Project is a grassroots industry coalition dedicated to creating standards and practices that improve the podcasting ecosystem for both listeners and creators.

James C: 2:35

Yes. And they are. They are definitely doing that. And I do notice that the podcast name Space is just about to launch phase six on the 1st of June. Lots of excitement around that coming up and the podcast Standards Project. Well, that's released what a blog post from launch.

Sam Sethi: 2:53

Hmm.

James C: 2:53

And

Sam Sethi: 2:53

Yes.

James C: 2:54

that's kind of it, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 2:55

The word crickets come to mind

James C: 2:56

MM It's a real shame because

Sam Sethi: 2:58

because

James C: 2:58

I was very excited

Sam Sethi: 2:59

I was very

James C: 2:59

about

Sam Sethi: 3:00

excited

James C: 3:00

what the Podcast

Sam Sethi: 3:00

about

James C: 3:00

Standards Project

Sam Sethi: 3:01

this podcast,

James C: 3:02

could do.

Sam Sethi: 3:02

but

James C: 3:02

And in fact

Sam Sethi: 3:03

and

James C: 3:03

only

Sam Sethi: 3:03

in fact

James C: 3:03

the other day I was reporting on Acast new Publisher podcast consortium thing where they are sitting together with all of the large publishers in the UK. And in that press release they're talking about working on standards. So yeah it's it's all interesting times in the consortium big large group

Sam Sethi: 3:27

Will,

James C: 3:28

thing business.

Sam Sethi: 3:29

without to clear that up, that

James C: 3:33

What's the big story this week? Sam?

Sam Sethi: 3:34

well, there's several. But the first one let's kick off with The New York Times yesterday announced the launch of their new podcast app.

James C: 3:41

Hmm,

Sam Sethi: 3:42

After nearly 18 months, The New York Times released its standalone audio app today, available exclusively to its 9.7 million subscribers and podcast like This American Life is going to be on there in a big way. They've got several other big podcasts that will be included in it. It feels very much like a BBC sounds play, James. So what are your thoughts?

James C: 4:03

it does. They've also launched a brand new podcast as well, which is called The Headlines, and that is exclusive on the NYT audio app, which is the name of this app. The New York Times says if you're a New York Times subscriber, you get all this included with your subscription. What they don't say is you get all this included with your subscription. If you're using an iPhone and if you're using an Android, tough, which seems very strange. It's an iOS only app, which I think is a massive misstep. Can you imagine how annoyed the half of their subscribers will be who own Android phones not being able to access something that they're paying for? So I think that that's a bit of a mistake. But

Sam Sethi: 4:51

So.

James C: 4:52

yeah, it will be interesting to learn a little bit more from The New York Times as to what their plans are there.

Sam Sethi: 4:58

Mm. Well, luckily, Michael David Channel, who's leading that project, he's a friend of mine, said he'll be on the show in the next few weeks to tell us more.

James C: 5:05

Excellent. The New York Times Company also published its quarter 123 financials, and they are saying that digital advertising revenue fell by 8.6%, mainly they say, due to lower revenue from podcasts. Hmm.

Sam Sethi: 5:22

That I'll take a point here that Adam made a couple of weeks back.

Adam Curry: 5:25

Well, I listen to Paid News Daily, I listen to it every single day and it sounds like CNBC headlines, you know, website. It is horrible. Stocks are up, but the market's up, built up. It's a great opportunity. It's up, everything's down. That means it's going up. I mean, you know, it's like, oh,

Sam Sethi: 5:41

We can't have it both ways, can we? The industry can't be growing and everyone leaving

James C: 5:45

Well, I think we can have it both ways a little bit. podcast advertising revenue is growing for most companies. It is still growing quite nicely. The IAB released their figures, which we'll get onto in a minute, which says, I think from memory, 26% up year on year, something like that. So I think we're certainly seeing that. And I have a feeling somebody said to me something the other day in New Zealand, which I thought was a really. perceptive comment, which is that every new industry has a period of just making things up as it goes along, and then it begins to understand how that industry works and then resets itself. And he said to me, Are we reaching the end of the make it up as you go a long period in podcasting? And I thought that was a really interesting comment because perhaps that is what's going on in terms of staffing levels, in terms of the retrenchment that we're seeing in the US particularly, and is the US. Are we seeing people who are basically turning around and saying, actually, you know, we understand how podcasting works now, we understand how to make money out of it and this is what we're going to end up doing and hence that's why we're getting rid of a ton of different people. I don't know whether you necessarily saw that at your time at Netscape or other, you know, early companies on that side.

Sam Sethi: 7:07

Yeah, you do see that maturity of the industry as people start to understand and early adopters just fall away and things become much more the norm. Yeah, it will be the same for the

James C: 7:16

MM

Sam Sethi: 7:16

podcast industry, I guess, but just it's sometimes funny to watch those two different messages coming out. The industry is great, but we're reducing people. Yeah, yeah.

James C: 7:25

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 7:26

We will watch

James C: 7:26

yeah.

Sam Sethi: 7:26

this space

James C: 7:27

No, absolutely

Sam Sethi: 7:28

now, the IAB in the US and the UK, let's talk about that. The US podcast Art Market is now worth 1.8 billion, according to new data from the IAB and the U.S. Revenue grew 26% last year, twice as fast as total Internet ad revenue. You see. There he goes. James, the converse story to what we were saying earlier. So it seems that the industry is growing rapidly. Unpack that for me

James C: 7:52

Yeah, it does. It seems as though the industry is growing quite nicely and twice as fast as total Internet ad revenue is is certainly worthwhile, bearing in mind. So a growth of 26% isn't particularly strong. I think it was about 23 or 24% last year. And so 26% for the latest figures is, you know, not not particularly massive, but still nevertheless far faster than anything else going on at the moment. But the company did say that they saw a significant slowdown in quarter for now, the way that the IAB in the US puts this together is that they work with PricewaterhouseCoopers, that a company that does an excellent job of paying all of the tax that it possibly can and what they end up doing with that particular company is that they then do quite a lot of of call outs to individual podcast publishers to get them to share their figures and get some nice figures back again. The IP predicts that the market will be$3.9 billion by 2025. There again, it predicted that the market will be $2.1 billion by 2023 and we're at 1.8 billion. So there we go. Predictions a Um, but yeah, you know, interesting seeing the numbers coming out of the US and at least interesting seeing that revenue was still growing quite nicely. Be really interesting to have a look at how those figures broke up over the four quarters. But of course we're not going to get that detail, will we.

Sam Sethi: 9:27

know now we also said last week podcast ad spending in the US is up 43%, nearly 44%. So again that's good

James C: 9:37

Yeah, that would that was from that was from SMI, which is a media analysis company. My understanding with those figures because obviously 43% is rather larger than 26%, which the IAB said. My understanding with those figures is that it obviously worked out different way, but they include things like branded podcasting and that kind of stuff as well. Interestingly, from them, they say that podcasting has 26% of all online audio spend, though, so the majority is going to streaming audio, things like streaming radio stations, but also, you know, Spotify as well. So worthwhile bearing in mind

Sam Sethi: 10:16

Hmm.

James C: 10:17

there.

Sam Sethi: 10:18

Now the IAB also had their upfronts in New York last week. James anything interesting come out of it?

James C: 10:24

I mean, I'd love to say yes. I mean, obviously the the growth of the industry came out of the IAB upfronts. I mean, you know, there's lots of exciting new shows coming out. Wondery and Bloomberg announced a miniseries focusing on the crypto scandal, which is which I thought was weird. It's available on Wondery Plus and the Bloomberg terminal. Who knew that the Bloomberg terminal also played podcasts, But clearly it does. And, uh, you know,

Sam Sethi: 10:53

And

James C: 10:53

Sony.

Sam Sethi: 10:54

they have to do something while the market is crashing.

James C: 10:55

Yes, exactly. And Sony Music Entertainment also announced a growing slate there as well. You know, lots of those sorts of announcements which you would kind of expect, I think

Sam Sethi: 11:06

And finally, back here in the UK, the IAB unveiled a campaign against it. I say this very carefully. Click ads.

James C: 11:13

click. It's

Sam Sethi: 11:13

Yes,

James C: 11:14

yes, I think it was a mistake.

Sam Sethi: 11:16

they

James C: 11:16

They

Sam Sethi: 11:16

have.

James C: 11:17

have a hashtag click heads with a capital C, but actually it works better if it's click cards with a small C because it looks a bit closer to what it's supposed to be. But the campaign is against marketers who just measure clicks through rates. And I looked at that and I thought, that's brilliant, because that's the problem that podcasting has is that we have is is quite hard to measure how effective podcasting is. Podcast advertising is at least. So yeah. So I thought brilliant. So they'll be talking an awful lot about podcasting and, and audio and all of that kind of thing. No, it doesn't mention podcasting or audio once. So that's a bit of a missed opportunity. I think.

Sam Sethi: 11:56

Now, moving on, our sponsors buzz out. They've got a enlarged podcast advertising tool that sounds very painful,

James C: 12:04

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 12:04

but

James C: 12:06

I hope. Alban's All right

Sam Sethi: 12:08

yes,

James C: 12:08

Yes it it'll

Sam Sethi: 12:09

it

James C: 12:09

now

Sam Sethi: 12:10

now

James C: 12:10

allows

Sam Sethi: 12:10

allows

James C: 12:11

up until uh

Sam Sethi: 12:12

up until

James C: 12:12

up until this week

Sam Sethi: 12:13

this week,

James C: 12:13

you've

Sam Sethi: 12:14

you.

James C: 12:14

been able to advertise your own podcast on Buzz brand ads. Now you can advertise businesses, products and businesses. So if you want to go and advertise the stuff that you have for sale, then go for it. But Sprout is now allowing that buzz dot com slash ads. Your ads will appear in here if you talk is it correctly, unless, of course, you have gone and bought the ad free version of Apple Arcade slash iPod news iOS only. But yeah, yeah. It's a nice thing to see Bass Pro enlarging that. It's a it's a nice tool. Not necessarily sure how many people are using it, but certainly being able to use that sort of thing is is a nice plan.

Sam Sethi: 12:58

now talking of platforms and advertising and monetization, podcasting, hosting and analytics platform Captivate has launched a new membership and tipping product. It allows podcasters to launch subscriptions and receive income directly from listeners. Yes, it's called the Cultivate Creative Suite. James, what do you think?

James C: 13:18

Yeah it's it's very smart captivate I think have so much stuff now they have had to build a tool kit that brings together captivate tools, their workflow tools, their revenue tools. Interestingly, I did an interview for Mark Asquith on one of the podcasts that he does and captivate have their own sort of calendar clone. So you can set up a time in people's calendars and all of that kind of thing, and it asks you questions prior to the meeting. Very, very impressive thing. And of course I used to be an advisor for them, but I haven't been for a couple of years now. So yeah, particularly smart. You had a chat with Mark Asquith, didn't you?

Sam Sethi: 14:02

Yeah, Mark did a great YouTube intro for all of this Captivate Creative Suite, which compelling, but I thought I'd reach out to Mark and have a chat with him about exactly what is his tool, who's he targeting it to, and yeah, why did they do it

Mark Asquith: 14:18

So we announced a hugely comprehensive and wildly flexible monetisation suite of tools, which includes tip in one off tip in which I know is something that is very useful to a lot of people looking to nurture an audience through to regular monetization. And then for those who are they're ready to monetize on a more regular recurring basis, we announced a very in-depth membership subscription tool that allows you to not only provide early access content, so a bonus with sort of windowed content, if you like, but also exclusive content that can go out to your members only and a combination thereof plus a range of other benefits. And the real kicker with that one, for me, the thing that interests me the most about that one is that we also built in the ability to limit the number of members in the slots available on each tier when it comes to your membership. So you can use that for not only selling content, which we know is something that works, but you can also use that to sell sponsor packages, Direct sales, sponsor packages, because we know that the power so many indies is in the niche in the power of that engaged audience. So we wanted to make sure that selling sponsorships and other products, you know, coaching programs and so on and so forth just became easy to manage because no one gets into podcasting to become an administrator or business manager. So we just wanted to make all of that easy. So yeah, it's been a big release. It's been fascinating to see it take shape and it's been exciting to see the response. I mean, it's been less than 24 hours since the.

Sam Sethi: 15:44

Release today, didn't it? This morning it's Wednesday. We're talking now. So went long, 9:00 this morning. So only 40 minutes ago it did.

Mark Asquith: 15:51

And I actually just set it up. I just logged into my Captiva account. I thought to myself, I better go set it up and genuinely it took like 3 minutes to set it. It went through the stripe. Integration instantly enabled tips. And then once I've done with this one, I'm going to go set memberships up on Spark Rebellion, which is our Star Wars show. So that was another important thing. I'm a firm believer in captivates continued mission, which is to always run ideas through the filter of can we save people time, save them money, or generate them money. And thankfully, this feature does it all.

Sam Sethi: 16:20

I wish he brought this out five years ago because what I had Sam talks technology. I built the whole platform for myself using Stripe and I created Wow, the whole thing with tips and integrations. And it took me forever because I'm not a very good coder and and fundamentally it works. And it worked with the Stripe API is on Squarespace, but I wouldn't say it was smooth and I wouldn't say it was very useful. So what you've done is made it available to the professional independent podcaster, but also made it so super simple, haven't you?

Mark Asquith: 16:55

Yeah, that was a big thing. One of our core beliefs at Captiva is that, like I said, you know, almost flippantly, you don't get into podcasting to do the other functions that inevitably you have to do when you become a podcaster, and especially when you start growing an audience, you become responsible for that audience experience. So we wanted to do a couple of things. We wanted to make sure that these features would give the serious podcast. So it's like I've always said to you when we talk, you know, Captivate is focused on the serious podcast. It doesn't matter whether you're just starting or whether you experienced on or that demarcation doesn't matter to me. It's whether you think of yourself as serious. So that was a first. And can we give people that would only genuinely have access to things like this if they were at such a level that they were attractive to a bigger platform? Let's give those people that aren't that big yet access to these type of tools, because to them it's everything. It's not fad. They just don't have the numbers that are a good business case for a bigger podcast hosting platform. And then the second thing was how can we keep this that simple that people out and worried? It's like when we talked about podcasting two point to keep these features simple enough that they aren't worried about setting them up. I don't have time. I can't manage this, which is something that we really achieve very nicely and is a bit of a bonus that goes along with that is that we're responsible for the technology behind the scenes to some of the biggest shows in the UK. I think like the newsagents, all the LBC shows. So we have to make sure that genuinely it's not just a marketing line, you know, this has to be enterprise quality level for some of those shows because if not, it won't serve those internal purposes here at Global. So we've always believed that mission. Let's keep it simple, let's keep it powerful for the serious podcast, but let's bring enterprise grade work to those indies. And we talked last time about, you know, what are some of the things that you see now being part of global? We can actually live that tagline even more because we are genuinely serve in the newsagents huge podcast. So we have to so it's such a such a nice feeling to sit here and enable tips for my Star Wars podcast, which gets like, you know, 100 downloads an episode because we just talk about Star Wars and we love it. But also to know that you know, the sequel pitch to human verbal diorama and people like the Aftermarket Radio Network and the horse radio network out in the US, you know, hundreds of thousands of listeners per month. We can all benefit from this with the exact same experience.

Sam Sethi: 19:30

Yeah. And I think one of the nice things that you did, you also integrated it with the new funding tag as well.

Mark Asquith: 19:37

Yeah, that was important. You know, we spoke last time about podcasting 2.0 and the belief in the open ecosystem and I talked on that an interview that Danny did with me on my show, the Podcast Accelerator, or about, you know, some of the risks of a lack of balance. And we've talked about it as well. When it comes to work, you push one way too much. You know, open ecosystem is everything. Let's not talk about anything else. All closed ecosystems, everything. Let's ignore open. I think that either way is dangerous. So that balance for me is vital. So when we did this, it was very important that we again lived up to that balance. You know, I don't want to create a user experience where someone says, Mark, listen, what's going on here? I've been using memberships and tipping for six months and I've only just found out that I should be popular in the field, which then leads through to the apps that support the funding tag. So it was a really important piece of the puzzle. And the irony of that part is that it's a tiny bit development work. You'll know this, you know, it's not a huge job to do that. It's more about being thoughtful because like I said on the 2.0 chat that we had, a lot of people don't really know about these things and the percentage of these features and these tags that are going to stick will be completely reliant on people seeing the benefit from them. And if I find my podcast, the button that says funding on my friend's podcast is not enabled for my podcast because Captivate just didn't think enough to automate that for me, that was a failure on our part, so we wanted to avoid that. We want to tell the people that aren't yet into podcasting 2.0 so that when I chat to the founders of the apps and talk to you and talk to gems on things like the accelerator and on this show, I can start to say to people, actually, he is why podcasting 2.0 matters. Because again, he's about bringing features to the masses that will help you and your audience. So it was a small development feature, but it was a huge thing mentally for us to be able to do that.

Sam Sethi: 21:38

Yeah, I actually don't think most people should even know anything about the podcast namespace or any of it. They should just see it as a feature that you've added. I always say complexity is fail simplicity, and if it's complex and it's hard, then you and I and anyone else involved in the bleeding edge of the name space podcasting to point out, has failed because we've just assumed, Oh, why? Then you click that, do that, jump through that hoop Twitter round. No, it's got to be Oh, it's an obvious benefit, as you say. So one of the things when I was listening and I know the answer, but I'd love it from you actually it doesn't support things like micropayments and digital wallet. Is that another example of too far too soon?

Mark Asquith: 22:23

Yeah, there are a lot of features that we could have put in there that we will add. We've got a 1.1 already planned and that is actually already started work like 3 minutes before this went out to production. So the short answer is yes, it's too much too soon because we've got a duty of care to educate people on how best to use this. And if we've got to then educate on actually what is this micropayment, what is B for the what is all of this other stuff that I may be on for? Like we all know what money is. We know how our bank accounts work. We know what happens when I put my card details in to a subscription service and receive something in return. So yeah, it was something that was just a little bit much, a little bit too soon, but it's something that we will roll into. This is something that we'll start to consider how best we can do this, because one of the one of the unseen things that I actually mentioned as well on the livestream almost in passing yesterday was the behind the scenes integrated stripe marketplace, as you talked about when you built your own solution out. Stripe marketplace is, you know, once that's integrated account level and I've just done that for my podcast, it will power all of the podcasts within your Captivate dashboard because we're a multi host platform. The fun thing with that is that we can start to support micropayments. Of course, but we can also start support products. So memberships tipping, you know, very, very specific way of generating a diverse range of revenue sponsorships that the same but also podcast is largely one to sell products, you know whether that's physical merchandise, whether that's coaching, whether that's services or whatever, we can start to support that now. So we've got things like paid for guest booking. So, you know, we might start to say, okay, I will do three guest slots a month for free, but if you want this premium slot on this one hour episode, whatever will charge you what are the 5000, 200 books, whatever that might include? And that's really simple for us to include. Now, the same with this is actually part of the plan. This has been part of the plans for like four years now. So when we rolled out things like the network features, well, what if I want to now charge for feed drops when we rolled out Air me the dynamic content platform? Well, actually, what if I want to charge for spot ads? What if I want to charge for trailer swaps and we can report on the impressions? So this was all sort of planned. But when it comes to to bring it back to that question about micropayments, it was all the same challenge. Memberships and tipping is something that people are familiar with. Yeah, I subscribe to Netflix and I tip my waitress, I tip my bar stuff and I'm too I'm used to the concept. So it's about the softness of education. How can I get people making money quickly so that they feel confident in the system? And also my responsibility as the person that works on Captivate, but also is sort of the bridge between captivate and the people using it. I want people to feel good about their podcast. If I start a podcast today and I put my first episode out and I get a tip, oh my word, I imagine that a few years ago, you know, it's crazy. I would love that.

Sam Sethi: 25:30

Now, is that to sentiment back that that's affirmation that you're doing something good is that is that pat on the back You know what we all love happening so you talk about where you've got it today. I can't really think of too many other things you want to add to it, really. I mean, it feels very much, you know, you've got this subscription, you've got the way that you've done it, I suppose. Is it further integration with Amy? What else we do with this without trying to get your roadmap out of you early?

Mark Asquith: 25:56

Oh, no, that's all right. I think it's good to talk about this. Anyway. I think I'm really shy about the broad road map. It's often the specifics of how we execute things that I leave until the reveal is just because the captivate ethos has always been that we should think differently and think more thoroughly than the other hosts do it. And that's not to sound flippant or even arrogant. It's for two reasons. It's that it keeps us good and it gives the podcast is the very best. Okay? But it also this will sound a little bit over cocky and it's not intended to. I think part of my job is to be the first person. It's to be the person that shouts about things. It's to be the person that gets people excited about things that is genuinely part of the job. And if I can help other hosts to think, Oh my word, we should do that, just like other hosts have done that for us. You know, all ships rise and every podcaster benefits. You know, it's not just captivate podcasters. So that's that's a mild digression, but that's the ethos that we that we use. So we are going to be doing things like adding paid for feed drops, we're going to be doing things like obviously integration with them because we control the whole ecosystem. Why AD free content is much easier because it just is because M is the thing that puts the ads in so we can work on that sort of thing. I also want to make the ability for people to promote their subscriptions. The memberships in their tips are much, much easier. So as an example of that, what one of the really fun features that I'm excited about because my barometer is will it save me the lazy podcast of time? Not like I'm like the avatar for Captivate. Am I lazy enough to want this feature? So it will be things like okay, I can use captivate, it's baked in ad painter. So essentially the tool that will allow me to pan over my audience and from minute ten to minute 15 and I will be able to tell them and I'll be able to tell Captivate that look, this bit of the podcast is actually exclusive and only the people that are paying for the membership access will get this 10 minutes right in the middle of the episode or whatever at the end, at the beginning. And then what Amy will do is when it detects that exclusive content, it will swap that out, that full 10 minutes or 1520 minutes, it will swap that out for a 15 second ad to get the public listeners to go and be supporters to get the extra content. So again, this was all a very planned out of release as Amy came first and networks stuff came first so that we could start to do things like that. I also want to do a lot of stuff around, like I said, the productize it like, can we sell coaching plans If I'm a podcaster, you know, I sort of always take a little bit of the mic out of like the podcast gurus because it's fascinating to see. But there are a lot of genuine people that start podcast, get ten episodes in and the people around them, local people are people that they know in their circles say to them, How do I start this podcast? Yeah, and they become the coach. And that's not to say they want to become a guru, it's just they can make a couple of grand every few months that helps with car payments and mortgages. So why shouldn't we help them to do that? You know, they're not trying to become the guru that sells to everyone. They're trying to help people that are asking. So I want to be able to allow people to sell that kind of thing as well. So there is a lot that I want to do. I want to add a lot of things like custom redirects in there so that people can say, Right, here's an opportunity for me to on board someone to something that I'm selling so that the podcast experience is maintained throughout a membership, for example. So there is a lot that we want to do and that's why the 1.1 stuff as frankly that started work today, you know.

Sam Sethi: 29:23

Brilliant. Look, Mark, where can people find out more about this? Where would they go.

Mark Asquith: 29:28

So you can actually find the captivate website as normal captivate dot I found. But what you're going to notice on there as well from today, there's a brand new page on there which will tell you all about the range of tools that we have pulled into what we're now calling the Captivate Creative Suite. So the creative suite is all of the tools that are unique only to captivate. So things like guest book in an interview, management dynamic, show notes, episode planning and research, the dynamic content engine, the baked in add to pen to and of course memberships and tip and we've bundled them under what we're now calling the Captivate Creative Suite. So head over to captivate fam and find the captivate creative suite. And this will tell you not only about memberships and tipping, but it will tell you about all of the other workflow and planning and all of the other serious tools that you can access for free as part of your captivate platform.

Sam Sethi: 30:19

Well, all I'll say, Mark, is may the force be with you now. Congratulations on that. Well, Mark, it was great. I actually followed through the whole demo and I highly recommend going to look at the video, which I assume is available on the website as well as just through YouTube.

Mark Asquith: 30:33

It will be I would recommend going over to YouTube on that one. You're absolutely right. I completely forgot about that. Well, the market to Mark and I think the good thing with that is we engage with the comments over there. So if there are any questions on the YouTube video, we can go through the comments and have a little chat. So absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for mentioning that.

Sam Sethi: 30:48

Cool wonder Mark speeches. So take care.

Mark Asquith: 30:51

Thank you, Jess.

James C: 30:52

Mark Asquith from Captivate. Captivate Fame is where you can find out more information. They have said that they're not supporting value for value yet and micropayments

Sam Sethi: 31:01

that,

James C: 31:02

that that's right, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 31:04

Yeah, look, I get it. Look, I'm a massive advocate of V for V micropayments. You know, anyone who listens to these podcasts will know that. But for a company this size of Captivate who are trying to bring along the long tail, this is the

James C: 31:20

Hmm.

Sam Sethi: 31:20

product mainly aimed at the long tail, the professional, you know, podcast with a couple hundred, maybe even up to 1000, you know, listeners. And to introduce value for value of micropayments, while they hadn't introduced any other form of monetization, would have been probably a leap too far.

James C: 31:37

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 31:37

So I think it's a good bedrock though for them to then later on, maybe in six months time bring out the idea now, now you're making money, here's another way to make money. So I can see it being a bedrock. But the good news, they are supporting the funding tax. They automatically turn on for the tipping part. They use the funding, take.

James C: 31:56

they are. Yeah. And I do wonder, I'm sure that Adam Curry is listening to this right now. I'm I'm looking forward to our weekly crit session on the Podcasting 2.0 podcast. But I'm sure that Adam is listening to this right now and going, tipping, tipping. Why are they saying tipping? And I would agree with him. I wonder whether there is a better word than tipping, and I wonder whether one off payments is clearer and would actually lead to higher numbers than the word tipping, because tipping is, you know, it's a dollar in the you know, in the glass, in the coffee shop, is it? It's not. It's nothing much more than that. So I think one of payments is perhaps the phrase that if I was still an advisor, I would have said captivate do keep a very small amount. I think from memory it's 3% from tipping and 12% from the membership service. But I reckon that they could make them make people more money if they called it one off payments rather than tipping. But who knows?

Sam Sethi: 33:05

and how I'm thinking about how does this compare and contrast to what Buzz brought out earlier this year? You know, we had subscriptions to, you know, podcasts, weekly review we have.

James C: 33:16

Hmm.

Sam Sethi: 33:16

How do you think they compare in are they apples and apples or are we talking different products?

James C: 33:21

I think that they are very similar. I think Captivate is using Stripe, which is a good system under the hood, but appears to use a sort of a PayPal type approach certainly for somebody outside of the US, which is very you know, it's it's very accessible but not necessarily sure that it's using the very latest tech. And I think Stripe allows you to do some quite smart stuff in the back end there. But yeah, but I think they are quite similar from that regard. I think Captivate they seem to have a very good UX person now who's really focusing on just making it clear and simple and straightforward, as do buzz brands. So I think, you know, interesting to watch both of those services going on.

Sam Sethi: 34:09

Hmm. Now, BBC iPlayer, I think you had something to do with it in the day. Just a little note I saw The diary of a CEO is now streaming on BBC iPlayer. It's becoming the first independent podcast to stream on the platform, which again is this a step towards the BBC taking their podcasts and bringing it into a YouTube type environment

James C: 34:33

Yes, that's weird. So if you don't if you're outside of the UK and you wonder what on earth we're talking about, BBC iPlayer is the TV player that the BBC has in the UK. And of course BBC sounds is their music radio and podcasts thing. Yeah, it's a fascinating question. They are hosting ten episodes from The Diary of a CEO non exclusively to expose the podcast to new audiences. So the BBC is essentially just bought ten of those particular episodes. I wonder what the deal is there and you know, if you can buy space on that, I suppose, you know, he he was a guest on Dragon's Den, which of course is a TV show that the BBC own. And so I wonder whether or not that's the justification that the BBC has. But, you know, I mean, I'm sure that there are lots of people who would like to who would like the BBC to buy their show and stick it onto the iPlayer as well. So, yeah, it's, it's a it's a curious choice, but iPlayer certainly appear to be making more commissioning plans for themselves.

Sam Sethi: 35:49

now there's a new podcast magazine coming out in the autumn is called Good Tape. It's a new print magazine from Dane Cardinal who's the VP at Gumbel. It captures the conversations happening in the audio industry. It's created by podcasts as full podcast as a magazine. James, does that feel like the 23rd century

James C: 36:11

it certainly seems an interesting plan. love printed stuff when it's done really well and I think, you know, if, if there's one thing I know about Dave is that he will do things, you know, really nicely and, and, and really top notch. It will feature work they say, from the countries foremost journalists and artists, the country I guess being the US. But yeah, I think, you know, some, you know they're already talking about art direction so you know it's going to be a decent, decent experience. So yeah, definitely worthwhile having a look at

Sam Sethi: 36:52

yeah, he he tweeted out, what did they thank you for all your support. Truly grateful. We've sold over 65 copies so far, exceeding our initial goal. So well done. And Dane's going to be at the London podcast show. He's coming to our drinks. Yes,

James C: 37:05

it.

Sam Sethi: 37:05

we can have a chat with him.

James C: 37:06

Yeah, he is indeed.

Sam Sethi: 37:07

Yeah,

James C: 37:07

It's a bi annual print magazine and if you want your copy, then you can use the code pod news and you will get some money off, which is nice. The address to get it is good tape dot com but there are four o's in good. So g0ood tape dot com which is really easy to read out. So

Sam Sethi: 37:31

but

James C: 37:31

there's a

Sam Sethi: 37:34

there's another newsletter launching as well. James. What's that? What about

James C: 37:39

there is. It's from Shreya Sharma. She has unveiled audio currents which she calls a newsletter for global audio news, which is nice. So she's not just looking at podcasting but looking at all other things as well. The product is from Recorder Coll, which is a new platform which I frankly don't understand too much about. It's being run by frequency media. And and so it looks as if it's a bit of a test for that particular platform as well, but certainly worthwhile having a play with that. It's at recorder Qualcomm slash audio currents. And Shreya, of course has been a writer for inside podcasting and various other online things as well. She's a good writer and I, for 1 a.m. quite interested in seeing something which is a little bit more focused on all of the audio out there rather than just podcasting.

Sam Sethi: 38:41

now? A new podcast Investment fund has launched a group of media and investment veterans are launching a new podcast company called Download Media that will invest in audio companies. The company is co-founded by Chris Peterson, formerly the executive Vice president of podcasts at iHeart Media in partnership with Red Sea Ventures, a consultancy that helps creators build digital businesses. Do you know Chris at all? James

James C: 39:05

I don't know Chris at all, although he used to be a reader of the Pod news newsletter, he may still be a reader of the Pod news newsletter. I hope he is. Download Media appears to be a bit like Pod X, but in the US. Would that be a sensible summation?

Sam Sethi: 39:24

Yeah, I think so. I think one of the things that we're talking about, they're extremely excited to announce a new venture where we'll be investing in the future of audio. We're looking to invest into great content creators, networks, tech and anyone that believes podcasting is still in the early growth stage, I think they don't have a great deal of money to invest, so I don't think they've raised a massive amount. So it will be seed rather than series A or higher, but I guess you have to start somewhere

James C: 39:50

Yeah, I guess so. I think it's really interesting. It's in partnership with Red Sea Ventures, so there is a a larger company which understands how this world works. And he was talking to Axios, talking about running a series as you would kind of expect. But yeah, fascinating to see European business models being rolled out into the US.

Sam Sethi: 40:17

now. Google Podcasts, if that's a thing anymore, a new a new podcast, search experience in Google is being rolled out in the US so we won't find about it. Users on mobile who search for generic terms like kids, podcasts or news podcasts. Now get individual podcast cards, which when clicked on, include links to players like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts. Strangely, nothing about YouTube. James I

James C: 40:44

Yes, strange that, isn't it? Uh, who knows what's going on there? So yeah, it's, it's, it's a really good experience actually. You can get this new podcast search experience with a US VPN and being able to link. There are two things that I find curious. One of them is that it doesn't contain any links to YouTube and it's built by Google who own YouTube. Duh. The other thing though is that links given this this this only appears on mobile, either on tablets or on mobile phones. I'm fascinated to see that links to Apple Podcasts appear on Android devices. What's going on there

Sam Sethi: 41:31

mean,

James C: 41:32

then? I mean they work it goes

Sam Sethi: 41:34

you

James C: 41:34

to the web experience.

Sam Sethi: 41:34

can go to the

James C: 41:35

Does

Sam Sethi: 41:35

web,

James C: 41:35

that mean it? Can't it? I'm sure.

Sam Sethi: 41:39

who

James C: 41:39

I'm sure it can't. But anyway but yeah nice to see you know it's got links to Spotify, to Apple Podcasts and to Google podcasts. Interestingly, when I looked at it, Spotify was marked free. Underneath Apple Podcasts is marked free underneath, and Google Podcasts is not marked free. So I don't really understand what's going on there either. But you know, but great to see a rather better, more interesting search experience than the one that the rest of the world has to put up with at the moment, which is just sort of random mentions of those podcasts on on websites.

Sam Sethi: 42:19

I remember a few months ago, people talking about the way that Google works and totally because I'd never work there and the thing about developers having to produce a product and then not going and getting enough traction to be a released product, and

James C: 42:34

Hmm.

Sam Sethi: 42:34

if they're successful in doing that, they probably get a promotion or they get some more shares or a pay rise or whatever,

James C: 42:39

Yeah, Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 42:40

and then those products are left to die on the vine because they're like side projects that someone's managed to push enough through

James C: 42:46

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 42:47

the old, you know, Google door. And this feels like it's like, Oh yeah, I'm going to put something out. Yeah,

James C: 42:53

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 42:53

it'll work here. And oh, do we do YouTube? Oh,

James C: 42:56

yeah,

Sam Sethi: 42:57

I can't be bothered

James C: 42:58

yeah. And also, to be fair, the YouTube access to the YouTube API is really quite hard. Even if you do work somewhere else in Google. And I don't think anybody has quite worked out how to link a podcast. When you see a podcast to a listing in YouTube yet. So you know, perhaps there's a there's a product there I guess, but certainly Google don't seem to have a very good track record recently of actually promoting their own thing. Google unveiled a new household tablet with a dock last week, which is quite a smart device. And during the launch, the company promoted Spotify as a way of listening to podcasts on it rather than YouTube. And the Made by Google Podcast has returned this week. And by the way, they're switching from Prodigy to Acast as their host. But the announcement from Google tells us to subscribe on Google podcasts, of course, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. So obviously the made by Google podcast

Sam Sethi: 44:04

Google

James C: 44:05

isn't

Sam Sethi: 44:05

podcasts,

James C: 44:05

promoting the podcast

Sam Sethi: 44:07

Spotify,

James C: 44:07

platform. It is made by Google, which is YouTube. It's a good thing they know what they're doing.

Sam Sethi: 44:13

Oh, come back stage Gay and brain. That's all I'd say, right? Rumble Not a platform I've ever been on, but Let's Get Ready to Rumble is the title

James C: 44:24

Well, that was

Sam Sethi: 44:25

online

James C: 44:25

my title.

Sam Sethi: 44:25

video platform is getting into podcasting with the acquisition of Colin, a social podcasting.

James C: 44:31

Yeah. So I think it's called in.

Sam Sethi: 44:32

Oh,

James C: 44:33

I

Sam Sethi: 44:33

right.

James C: 44:33

think it's called in.

Sam Sethi: 44:34

That

James C: 44:34

It's

Sam Sethi: 44:34

makes

James C: 44:34

a

Sam Sethi: 44:34

sense.

James C: 44:35

yeah,

Sam Sethi: 44:35

Yes.

James C: 44:35

it's a social podcasting and live streaming platform. Apparently it's got a million users. I've frankly, that's passed me by, although the fact that it's just been bought by rumble seems to suggest that it's a good thing that it's passed me by given that Rumble owns Donald Trump's truth Social Network truth. Donald Trump In truth, I just said Donald Trump and truth in the same sentence. And

Sam Sethi: 44:57

We'll be bound somewhere

James C: 44:58

yes,

Sam Sethi: 44:58

down

James C: 44:59

the video platform is popular rumble that is is popular among American right and far right users. I'm reading this from Wikipedia. Don't ask me. I guess it's just that YouTube is adding podcasts and Rumble, which sees itself as a competitor to YouTube. It also wants to add podcasts as well. And perhaps that's the the way that they're going to do its calling appears to have an awful lot of podcasts on there, but I don't recognize any of the podcasts, so I don't know whether it's a special thing that you need to upload separately to or not. I don't fully understand it, to be honest, but I'm also not that interested. So there is a ways that

Sam Sethi: 45:44

Okay. Now with around the world in France, Paradise Media has acquired a binge audio who and what James

James C: 45:54

binge audio very large publisher of podcasts in the US and they seem to be doing very well. So parody, so Media, which is also a French company but is also present in L.A. and New York. So a podcast consolidation going there.

Sam Sethi: 46:14

a bit more as well. In France our audio monetization and distribution company audio has acquired the Italian audio production company a Monterey

James C: 46:22

or Monterey is perhaps they pronounce it. Yes. Audio is doing all kinds of stuff. It's also just announced audio on three six, which claims it's the first to merge a podcast content management system, a text to speech solution for print publishers and an integrated proprietary advertising platform. Yay! And it has already signed a number of large French podcast publishers. They are definitely a set of people to keep an eye on. I think

Sam Sethi: 46:50

Hmm. Back here in the UK roadshow release, it's spring 2023. Midas Report which measures a multi-platform

James C: 46:58

I'm

Sam Sethi: 46:59

audio. And Adam Bowie, friend of the show, did some great analysis on it, as did Matt Deegan. The big number, I suppose, from podcasting is the number of people listening to podcasts each week has doubled in the past five years. That goes against what we said earlier in the year. The podcasting had flatlined again. I guess so confused about all of this,

James C: 47:20

Yes, well, different numbers say different things. I would probably go with Rachel's numbers. They are pretty good. I would prefer to go with Edison's infinite Dial UK, but that hasn't been redone in the UK quite yet for this year, but certainly looking at this, I think what I'm more interested in is yes, the number of people listening to podcasts each week has doubled. But what Midas also measures is the amount of time that people spend with podcasts and with other audio platforms. And there are some people out there who will tell you that the number of people and the time that they spend listening are linked. But this shows that that's not the case. The time spent listening to podcasts has increased more than double up by more than two and a half, more than 2.3 times. So and I am much more interested in the total time spent. Now podcasting and any data that gives me that far more interested in than just someone who claims that they have listened to a podcast at some point over the last year, which I've genuinely seen somebody else produce so much more interested in that, in that sort of thing, other bits of information, just 1% of all audio played on smart speakers is a podcast which is interesting and I think goes to show that UX on smart speakers is pretty poor and 80% of podcast listeners in the country listen to just between one and three episodes a week. So yeah, there's a thing.

Sam Sethi: 48:57

I'm still in the UK. Just a couple of congratulations. The podcast company Mags Creative is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Well done there. And also in the UK, Fresh Air has been named as one of the best small companies to work for in the UK by the Sunday Times. Neil Cowling, who is the CEO, said I honestly couldn't be prouder of. This. When you grow a small business, you have the opportunity to build a culture from scratch and then the extraordinarily humbling privilege of other people choosing to dedicate their working lives to shaping that further with you. So congratulations to Neil as well.

James C: 49:30

Yes. And congratulations

Sam Sethi: 49:31

Congratulations

James C: 49:32

to Tink media.

Sam Sethi: 49:32

to

James C: 49:33

Lauren Purcell, who they were voted best podcast PR company by the Quill Podcast Awards. And so say all of us so many congratulations. One thing I did notice on the bottom of one of their very recent releases was a really simple paragraph explaining what a podcast was and how to get one. And I think that we kind of forget that. And it was a really simple paragraph. I rather boringly said, you might want to say subscribe and follow rather than just subscribe. But apart from that, I thought it was just a brilliant thing, so well done to them. In Africa, there's a bunch of interesting stuff going on there, including a podcast tour in Zambia. We mentioned that a couple of weeks ago, but Musinga can kinda has been there and really enjoyed it. So we link to that from Pod News this week. Also a look at the podcasting industry in Africa as well. And of course all kinds of stuff going on in New Zealand and Australia. I was in New Zealand over the weekend which was great, very much enjoyed that. And there's the New Zealand Podcast report which is out with Podcast Ranker out from Triton, as well as the Australian podcast Ranker out as well. You'll find both of those at Triton rankers dot com rather sadly, The Australian podcast Ranker still doesn't have the ABC who said that they had were definitely going to be in it this time. Honestly, you're on a cross cross our cross our fingers, but they're still not there, which is a great shame. And finally in the Netherlands, Portimao is celebrating its one year anniversary in the country, claiming 13000000 hours of podcasts were listened to in the first year on the platform. Again, great figures to end up seeing.

Sam Sethi: 51:24

him. Now, job news. James, what's been going on

James C: 51:27

Yes, Teresa Elliott has been hired as the new chief revenue officer at Ads Results Media. She had been at Spotify for eight years. UCL is offering, which is University City College, London City University,

Sam Sethi: 51:42

at University

James C: 51:43

University

Sam Sethi: 51:43

College, London?

James C: 51:43

College, London.

Sam Sethi: 51:43

Yeah,

James C: 51:44

You're you're you're an alumni of that, aren't you?

Sam Sethi: 51:46

no, I'm.

James C: 51:47

Oh no,

Sam Sethi: 51:47

I'm City University.

James C: 51:48

that's the other one. That's

Sam Sethi: 51:49

Yes,

James C: 51:49

city.

Sam Sethi: 51:50

yes.

James C: 51:50

Yeah. It's very confusing. All very

Sam Sethi: 51:53

I'm very

James C: 51:53

confusing. Anyway, UCL is offering ten

Sam Sethi: 51:55

heavy

James C: 51:55

scholarships

Sam Sethi: 51:56

scholarship.

James C: 51:56

to students with links to East London who want to study a master's degree in audio storytelling. The scholarships cover tuition fees and a living allowance as well. It's pretty good. You'll find a link to that today if you want to take advantage of that. Not really a job, but nevertheless something for you if you want a job in the future. Seb Rennie, who was hired by Southern Cross Austereo, the big radio broadcaster here in Australia, as looking after listeners commercial side is now to be selling Cross Austereo as new chief commercial officer. So he's been moved up very, very quickly, which is interesting to end up seeing. And of course, Elon Musk has a new CEO that he can fall out of love with and and fire in, you know, three months time or whatever. The poor woman's name is. Linda. Yeah, Carino. Yeah. Carino. Who Yes, who's, who's done all kinds of other things as well. So

Sam Sethi: 53:01

It's called the glass Cliff. That's what it's called. James. She's been brought in. And in terms that people use. So women are allowed through the glass ceiling when the job is awful

James C: 53:14

Right.

Sam Sethi: 53:15

and then they're allowed to fail and then

James C: 53:17

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 53:17

fall off a glass cliff and then everyone then points the finger at them and says, see, it was her fault. And that's pretty

James C: 53:23

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 53:24

much what this one is going to be. He's

James C: 53:25

yeah,

Sam Sethi: 53:26

going to allow her to fail badly, drop her off a cliff and they and go have to take over again.

James C: 53:31

yes. It's, it's all very depressing. So anyway, space Karen, as some people call him, what's the other thing that people call him as well. Um,

Sam Sethi: 53:43

I think we can come would

James C: 53:44

well

Sam Sethi: 53:44

get explicit

James C: 53:45

yes,

Sam Sethi: 53:45

right

James C: 53:45

yes.

Sam Sethi: 53:45

it otherwise

James C: 53:46

No there is that, there is that. I got away with a slightly rude word. Yes. Last week, just by, uh, just by editing out the vowel to anything I could quite manage. Anyway, if

Sam Sethi: 53:56

anyway

James C: 53:56

you're looking for a job.

Sam Sethi: 53:57

if

James C: 53:57

Pod

Sam Sethi: 53:57

you're

James C: 53:57

News

Sam Sethi: 53:57

lucky

James C: 53:57

has podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world, and they're free to post as well. It just takes 2 minutes to add a new round. And in fact I've seen quite a few this week. Pod news dot net slash jobs is the place to be. Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod news newsletter. Here's where we do all of the tech talk. What's going on in terms of

Sam Sethi: 54:20

tech

James C: 54:20

tech. Then?

Sam Sethi: 54:21

downloads. Let's start off with some very quick ones popping in is recently released episode chapters so good news. Congratulations to them. Podcast host Usher has launched a new location feature. So again,

James C: 54:34

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 54:34

if you want to know where you use his are and where they're listening to you, they you can get access depending on what level plan you have to country, city or state level. So yeah, a little bit more detail there.

James C: 54:44

Yeah. Which to me, to be fair, you can get you can get with quite a few other companies, including OPC, which gives you a city level data for free and everybody should be on IP three. But yes, there is a thing. Maxime, the CEO will be our guest on the show coming up. I understand.

Sam Sethi: 55:01

well, he's going to be a guest on the future show on pod news. So yes, I thought he's good,

James C: 55:06

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 55:06

you know, to reach out to him. And I'm glad they've come back as a chair. They'd love to do it. They might. A few announcements

James C: 55:10

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 55:10

over the last few weeks, and it'll be good to hear directly from the horse's mouth. Now,

James C: 55:15

They are really good at PR and stuff like that, so yeah. Yes, they're doing a very good thing. Odile, who works for them in the US, was asking me the other day if I am a cheese and wine person or an oysters and beer person. And so I went back and I said Cheese, cheese and cheese and bear. Is that is that an option? Is that okay

Sam Sethi: 55:36

can I have a fondue

James C: 55:37

pocket

Sam Sethi: 55:37

set?

James C: 55:37

casts? Who knows what? Yes, exactly. Pocket casts. Who knows what's going on with that they earlier on this year changed their prices a little bit. Then they quadrupled them. Then they said that that's only for new subscribers only. But if you're a current subscriber, you're still being given renewal notices from Google Play saying you're going to be paying the big price from here on in$40 a year for a podcast app. You know, it's a great podcast app. I use it not necessarily sure that it's necessarily worth$40 a year. I don't know. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But that's quite a hike. It's it's not the first time that they've screwed up their pricing. The last time they did this was in 2019 when Grover was in charge and they ended up charging everybody. And then those users who claims that they had bought lifetime packages said, well, hang on a minute, I thought I bought a lifetime package. And so they had to change their mind rather quickly on that. So not quite sure really what's going on with pocket casts. But, you know, for all of our sakes, I hope that they get that all sorted relatively soon.

Sam Sethi: 57:00

Now, we talked about a number of podcast platforms launching. Now I reached out to the first one, which is Martin Moritz and Pod Friend. There's a new version 2.0. Martin has been quietly working on updating it, and I thought I'd find out from Martin directly what's going to be in the new version of POD printed and what he'd been doing and when available. More importantly

Martin Mouritzen: 57:25

thank you. Nice to be here.

Sam Sethi: 57:27

Now, look, we had you previously. Season one, Episode 37, talking about pot rent. But we've got you back because there's a new pot friend 2.0 coming on the horizon. And I was very excited to find out more about it. So what's what's new about pot friend to point out.

Martin Mouritzen: 57:44

So I'm glad you're asking pot friend 2.0. I've implemented the little tech so you can now watch live shows. There's a lot better transcripts. So now you can watch the transcripts basically like a chat while you listen to the podcast. We pull in both the person tack and the transcripts and then mix them so you can actually see the faces of the people that are talking and the names. And it really creates like a much more smooth experience. It feels like that's how transcripts should have been from the start.

Sam Sethi: 58:14

Now I've seen a screenshot that you put on the mustard on the podcast index, so it looks really beautiful. I think Adam was very excited by it as well.

Martin Mouritzen: 58:23

Yeah. Thank you.

Sam Sethi: 58:25

You mentioned the tag. So let's start off with a little tag. First of all, actually, before we start that, you rewrote the whole code base. That's the first thing you did.

Martin Mouritzen: 58:33

I did. Yeah. And you know the first version of Pod Friend? I was anxious. Yes. Think about it. Coding away. And I made some architectural decisions that just made it very hard to build on. And in the start, you take those shortcuts just to get speed. And then at some point, it starts to talk you down. And I hit the point where, well, actually, maybe it was more so like a developer experience. It just felt like, oh, it was annoying for me to add new features where now I completely rewritten it. Now it's so much more pleasant to add new things to the app. So hopefully while I did that layout and transcripts and a few other things like then over the next half year, but hopefully I'm going to add a lot more to it.

Sam Sethi: 59:17

Excellent. What's the stack? What have you built on Node React JavaScript?

Martin Mouritzen: 59:22

So it's built in Node in React. So and actually a little bit of IP on the server side and the desktop is built on something called electron where I, you know, it also take the React code and then it basically compiles it to a desktop native app, Mac Linux Windows. And then I use something called Cordova for the mobile app. So it actually also does the same and then generates a native app for Android and the native iOS. So everything is actually made like that. I'm getting a little bit technical but responsive. So if you take that this app window and you make it smaller, you actually get like the mobile version on the desktop. So everything is the same code base. And since I'm just one developer, I, you know, I have to really think about working smarter and not harder.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:02

Yeah, no, I fully agree. I mean, having three code bases to run would be mental. Now let's start off with the tags. So first of all, for those who don't know that tag stands for the life item tag. It just means that there's a block within the RSS feed that allows podcast host to say when their show might be live. When it ends and there's a whole bunch of links to servers and other things in there. So implementing the tag, how hard was it?

Martin Mouritzen: 1:00:32

Super easy. I would say the hardest part was actually like the UX, like hiding some parts that only make sense for Non-live shows. So for example, you can skip ahead, you can skip back things like that. But other than that, my stack, like implementing that audio stream, was quite easy for me. So for the developers that are thinking of starting, just just do it. It's quite simple.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:55

Yeah, we were talking off air just before saying that one of the biggest challenges for all of the app developers is actually the hosts don't end the show or they don't refresh the RSS feed at the end point. So we have to do whatever they say their end show is. We have to fundamentally in the show because users will go, Is it still live? Oh, look. And often I won't name them, but several well-known lit live shows would be live hours after they were actually finished. So we actually decided to end their shows for them.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:01:26

Yeah. And Thursday and time in the live tech and in part friend, what I do is that I show the show us and it but I still allow people to tune in so that if it's the very last part, I don't want to just completely shut it off. Exactly So yeah, yeah, that's how I do it.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:43

Yeah, I fully agree. The other thing we were talking about is the use of the grid within the tag. Now, Todd Cochran does it correctly. I'm going to give Adam and Dave a minus B for this one. They don't use a grid. They use a string, text. String. You had a really good idea for the giveaway just now. What was it?

Martin Mouritzen: 1:02:04

Yeah. So my idea would simply be to use the future grid of the episode. That way, once we start implementing new things like live comments, live histograms, we can slide into the episode like a live episode, and then as soon as it transitions into being a non-live episode, well then you have all that content there. And I think moving forward, like that kind of rich content, we do want that in there. Like we do want to add a bit like if you watch YouTube Live stream or Twitch Stream, you do want to see the chat and when it happened and the boost when it happened, things like that. So for me it's a no brainer. It's simply just needs to be the future. Go if you put in the lap tag.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:41

Yeah. And I'm wondering, there's also a field in there called a link and whether the link could be used for the. I think they've created a new chat link. I wonder whether that link also used for the live chat. That would be quite useful.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:02:55

Yeah, that that is actually how I interpret the link right now in part four and like if there's a link I showed a chat I can and then of course there are a few podcasts that do not use it as a chat. And then it does create a little bit of a weird user experience. I did think about looking for certain keywords in the link, like if it says RC or something. Yes, then I know it's a chat and if not, then maybe I'll default back to a more generic icon.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:19

Yeah, I think it's great and I can see the direction that Adam and Dave want to take it. I mean, Adam's background being a DG, he's very involved in making music as well as part of the splits, and I think that's great. But I think one of the biggest missing things right now with the left is actually from the host perspective is actually how do you set up a live server? And I don't think there's enough hosts right now providing a value add to their hosting created. So we James and I host with us now. It would be lovely if Boss Brown offered an additional feature. Oh, by the way, would you like to go live? I'll click this button and you can share this HLS server and you can then populate your live item tag with it. Right? That would be so cool if you hosted that.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:04:09

I think it just takes like a first mover. So as we also talked about before the show, there's not a lot of podcasts out there that do live shows at the moment. If they are, then I'd do a single little development and I think it's such a community experience to listen to a live show, especially when you're taking the stuff like Boost the Grams to it, said podcasting 2.0 Show Friday where I boosted that and it's super nice to hear the host of the show read it aloud during the show. And I think a lot of podcasts is probably would like that kind of experience. And let's just say they don't know how to start. So if someone could be by Sprout, could be RSS, com could be whatever, I decided to tie that in with that platform that I think we'll probably see it being a table stakes feature in, you know, a year to come or something. Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:56

I do know if one host is working on it, so I, but I'm not allowed to say you're not allowed to say so they will be the first mover, which will be very interesting. I think that is a game changer. What else do you think you're going to be looking at? Bringing out in the next few months?

Martin Mouritzen: 1:05:11

So I have a list of features that's probably 1000 items long, some of things that we like that's really interesting for me to look at is what can we use boost for? I would love like, I have an idea that, hey, you should be able to boost, let's say, pot friend and as soon as we reach like a critical mass, hey, we will actually generate a transcript for you and then we'll make it available for all other apps. Could be the same with chapters or something. Of course. Then we're moving a little bit into A.I., which I know some people hate, but you could also be other things, like as soon as you boost a certain amount and you know, will automatically promote the show or something like that. So so I really like the idea of what you can use boost for. I've also been thinking about the ability to comment where maybe you can comment without a boost, but if you add a boost, it becomes like a cross app boost. So we send it to the other apps in the podcasting ecosystem. And I also talk heavily about like there's been a lot of talks about kits, podcasts, and I have a 11 year old boy and there are probably some podcasts that we don't want him to listen to. And we thought hard about like sub accounts to friend like so you create like a count and say, Hey, you can listen to this podcast, but not all the others or maybe also podcast that has like a kid friendly guest tech or whatever we end up calling it. So those are some of my future ideas. I think the mistake I made with Friend one was that I went after all the bleeding edge podcasting 2.0 thing and sometimes forgetting the core experience because yes, you can get a user base for a podcasting 2.0 overlap, but it will only be people that use it for one or two shows and then they return to the main podcasting app for the rest. And I want to make pot friendly. Good for all kinds of shows. So I really want to work also in the ability to create like lists of podcasts so you can share them with your friends. I often get asked like Max and recommend me a true prime podcast and I would really love for them to just go to my account and see, Hey, which True Crime podcast did Martin listen to and what did he rank them and review them? So yeah, so a bit more like social discovery and yeah, so, so those are some of the ideas that I have in the near future.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:34

Brilliant. Yeah. Now I fully agree with all of those two questions. Have you implemented streaming stats. Yeah. As well. You've got Boost. Yeah.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:07:41

Yeah. I think part friend was like the second app ever to implement streaming sets like after I think previous was the first for both and then I think Fortran came second. Yeah that's always been there. I am thinking like because at the moment I'm not aggregating the streams which sometimes create complications. If you stream a sufficiently low amount, then that's not like if you stream let's say ten sets at the moment, like for example, the podcasting 2.0 show, they have 12 splits right now and that's not enough to satisfy everyone. So I'm thinking a little bit on how to bundle and do that smarter. Okay, I know some of the other apps, they save up a payment until there's at least three sets for recipient. But then I happen thinking then you lose a little bit of the live feeling. But but maybe that's okay. So that's certainly something I'm going to be looking at as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:29

Yeah, we've found we are homing in on that as well. We've set a limit of 100 per minute streaming and 100 apps for a boost as a minimum. Unless you do nothing. I mean, you can put the value to zero, but we don't want people doing 21 or 23 songs and I get why people want to put low amounts a numbers in, but 100 stats per minute over a two hour show. I showed Adam and Dave the value of their show, for example, at 2 hours was 12,000. So that's right. We turned out to be $2. Yeah. If you can't afford to give Adam and Dave $2 to listen to their show for 2 hours and, well, why are you doing that? And that's 100 stats per minute. So if you were streaming at $0.15 per minute or $0.10 per minute and then you had to split that 15 or 12 ways, which is their split value, there's no micro sat, right? There is no it does exist, but nobody supports it. So the problem is how do we do two and a half SAS to somebody or 2.4 SAS then do I have to make an arbitrary round up. Oh you get three and you get two and you get one. So we've run out 12 into ten. Doesn't really work very well. Right. So we've decided rightly or wrongly and will get feedback to set it at 100. And we think the industry is should move the bar up, we should move the bar up, as I said, over 2 hours, 12,000 sast and actually work out to be a lot of money.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:09:55

That that actually makes sense. It's also an easy solution to my problem. So maybe I'll take that. Yeah. I actually have a minimum boost of 1000 sets because I started to look a little bit at like analytics on the server side, which is actually like one of the only analytics pieces I've ever spent a lot on my platform. And I saw that basically that was under 4.1% of tools that were under a thousand. So it's like why even by adoption?

Sam Sethi: 1:10:21

Exactly. Exactly. Now, the other thing, as we were saying, you've implemented using old, my question is, how is it first of all, how easy was it to implement the old API?

Martin Mouritzen: 1:10:32

So now we're getting into an interesting discussion like Pat Frank used to use LMP, which I actually quite liked because the implementation was quite easy back then, so LP was decently easy to implement for some reason. I had a lot of problems with the like the staging environment, the test environment, which kept failing for me. And I have to assume it's not me because in production it just works fine. But that did create some problems because it was very hard to test without moving live because the auth page is under live. So when I'm in my testing environment, like suddenly I have to mix the two to test it. But no, it worked. I would say that the main problem was that in the old architecture, every use that just got created by a wallet by default and they didn't have to think about SATs. So like anything really, of course they had to buy some and put into wallets. So there is some on boarding there. But here now I have to guide people away from my app and say, Create, I want it over here. And then you kind of lose you lose control of the onboarding flow. So I tried to do an upfront onboarding and say, Hey, now I'm letting you go. Now you have to go in here and create a wallet yourself. But I know also in my day job that as soon as you sent people over to a third party system, you know, a lot of them are not going to come back. And I am a little bit frustrated about that. I hope in the future that I can talk with the LP people and maybe we can. It would be nice if we could create like a temporary wallet and then as soon as the user is ready to, hey, I want my own out of the wallet, like then they could take the key from the temporary wallet and turn it into a real wallet or something like. And yeah, it's definitely something I think about. And I actually reached out to Oscar Mario from Fountain to ask them what they were using. They use a system called CBT and it's a lot closer to Elon Pay, but they don't have the concept of user wallets. So you would have to basically manage everything virtually. Yeah, and I can just see so many problems like some era on the server side. And then your biggest boosting for James Cridland or something like from his wallet or some like No.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:47

I fully agree that Bhoomi and Moritz over Obi have got to do more for the onboarding. I I've sent them multiple messages saying that the way that the hand-off works is very messy right now and they have promised to update it. But so far we've seen nothing. So in the same way as you do it, the user on board, we then go off to Obi Crater while they authorize the wallet, then come back. So we've got a return path into our platform. That's fine, but then it doesn't create the lightning address. So then the user has to go off again to create the lightning address and at which point we lose them in the ether because it doesn't have a return path into us.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:13:28

Yeah, and I think at that point the user has already authorized you attract on their behalf. So if they just created an endpoint that we could call and say, Hey, create lightning address and give me the result by default, that's it. I don't want to give a shout out to be like that. They have great customer service. Like I even reached out on podcasting, they social are on Mastodon that's support me. And he replied within minutes. I know a few of your technical questions so that was awesome.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:54

That premium are it's a brilliant and I should declare I am an advisor to the company as well so I should be very transparent on that one. But that said, I think they are focusing also on integration with Noster, which is something that is very interesting. By the way, I'm not sure if you're aware, but within the API API you can pull the next public keys in as well through the API.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:14:17

Now I did not know that, but that's of course interesting. Also thinking of what Davis doing with the live chat. Like suddenly that opens up some possibilities.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:29

Absolutely. Yes, they are interesting. And it also means that if you wanted to do a share out of any activity from your app to Twitter or whatever, you can also do it as a note to not to just if I if you're interested.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:14:44

Yeah. No, I love to be on the bleeding edge things. As I said, I do try to balance that a little bit now, but I think those community aspects like chat comments, which in my mind like maybe they can be the same things like what is fundamentally different from a comment to a chat slightly. I think they could be the same thing. The question, of course, becomes like where do we store it? Like where do we, you know, keep it? And there are already infrastructure out there that we could use. So for me, it's interesting to look at those and I see the activity on the podcast index website like it's moving forward a little bit, but it's still like, oh, it feels so close but so far away. So yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:27

Yeah. I mean, I'm not really you'll probably say I'm not really engaged with that community over there or an activity pub because I just find it very difficult. I've used multiple clients like Ivory and others and I still just don't warm to the platform completely. And I'm, I like the know the platform, although I think it's very embryonic. I like it for a couple of things, which is it has lightning payments, micropayments within it as well. So there is a potential for the chat to become a payment so that you don't have spam coming back in and there's lots of other things. But anyway, so given that you're building all this stuff, when do you think it's going to be available? Are you in beta now with people? When's it going to be released?

Martin Mouritzen: 1:16:14

Yeah, it is. And based on what a few people friends of mine. But the problem really is that I'm basically it's a very big bang release. It's replacing both the web part where I have a lot of users and the desktop where apparently it's paid for and found like a niche in desktop usage. So there's quite a lot of use that. And I just want to make sure that I'm not ruining the experience of the existing users and I have done a few user tests with people and it seems to be working well. So right now I'm down to like a few tickets on my to do list that has to be done. And one of them is, for example. Also I want to make sure I don't break the echo because I have quite a lot of issues on the Part Friend website, so I need to make sure that redirects are working. I need to make sure that I still have a good description and our favorite podcast show and episode and things like that. And that's it's a little bit hard to test when you're not moved to the production server. But yeah, my wife is, is going to South Africa next week, so I'm home alone for a week. So that's going to be the release week. Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:18

I just have visions of that film Home Alone. When you said.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:17:22

Yes, well, I hope it will not be like that.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:24

Not exactly sending clients down the stairs. And last question, really, where are you on things like video support music? You know, again, there's a lot of chat on the podcast index about pod role and interject ing music.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:17:40

Yeah, so I already implemented the patrol track actually. And then also the correction sort of patrol tech.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:46

I'm currently in the role of correcting it as well.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:17:50

And that works really well and I was actually surprised how much value it gives to that podcast page.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:55

Brilliant, isn't it?

Martin Mouritzen: 1:17:56

Yeah, and it really enriches the page. Like even though, for example, on on the newest page, like you can just see like hey recommended shows and even now I saw on another podcast like the Miyamoto's podcast, they also implemented this like, Oh, it just feels good, feels great, and it also puts the podcast too much more in control. I do still think that at some point I will implement something like Hey Pot Friend, think it will like these shows based on listening patterns and things like that, but for now it really enriches the experience then, Oh sorry, not a complete lost.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:30

Music in video.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:18:31

Music and video. Yes. So friend one actually supported video and I also want friend to to support that. At the moment it does not. And that's simply just because I change to like how I process the stream but it should be fairly quick. So it's actually more like, like on a technical side. So it's more like a fair UX question. But I do see that coming within the next couple of months. And in regards to music, I think it's a fantastic thing and I really like what I'm seeing. I think it's one of those things where I have to hold myself back and not be one of the first movers simply because you can sink a lot of time into it. I do already have a working version of Friend too with the time split, so I do want to implement that so that someone plays a piece of music in the podcast that we changed the value split. But I do envision that at some point in the top A that would be like a toggles to switch between podcasts and a music. So that will happen at some point. I can almost guarantee it. It's more a matter of I really once Part two is out there, still probably going to be a lot of bucks because there always is. There's going to be a lot of things to it to improve the user experience and publish it. So I'm going to dedicate myself to doing that for just the first couple of weeks after release. And then for the next couple of months, I'll probably dedicate myself for podcasting where it features. And at that point, since it is a hoppy project currently until I start to look into monetization, then I do work on what I feel inspired by and what I feel passionate about. And music is one of those things, but there's just so much to do with podcasting before I'll get that.

Sam Sethi: 1:20:18

Very much the same. I think there's about 10,000 podcasts or music casts, whatever you want to call them inside of the podcast index. And I think using the medium tag, it would make a lot of sense to be able to toggle and switch. I mean, again, very simple things. The cover art for podcasts is album art. The transcript has lyrics and the episodes become tracks. I mean, it's not that difficult.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:20:43

To know exactly. And one of the reasons why I actually back in the days decided to make a friend was because I use Spotify to listen to music, and then I started to use Spotify to listen to podcasts, and it annoyed me a lot that the state of Spotify is like shit between the music and podcast. And I use music and podcasts very differently. Like I listen to music while I code, but I can't listen to a podcast while I code because then, you know, I start listening and start programming and suddenly then I had to go into Spotify, go back to music, find where my favorite tracks were. And then when I wanted to get back to the podcast, it was like, Oh no. Then it felt like it was gone. And sometimes it forgot where I was at in the episode and things like that. So I do want to have them combined, but I also want them to be different experiences so that the use of the sites now I want to listen to music on, now I want to listen to podcasts and then it knows where you were at the podcast you were listening to. And the same with the music. Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:46

Brilliant look. Good luck with Pod friend. It sounds very exciting. MARTIN Welcome back to the party. Thank you. So roughly somewhere in June, can we say that there'll be a person pod friend to the island? Is that safe to say? Oh.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:21:59

That's definitely safe to say. Like right now, it's more like whether it be this week or the next.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:04

Okay. Yeah. So if people want to get onto the new version or if they want to sign up and where would they go?

Martin Mouritzen: 1:22:11

Oh, that would be part for Intercom. And right now I'm part of the income. I have kind of like a landing page. I'm going to change that. So basically jump directly into the app and then from the app itself it will say, Hey, you could also download it for iOS or Windows. Yeah, so, so just get people right into the action.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:30

Excellent. Martin, good to see you as always, mate.

Martin Mouritzen: 1:22:33

Likewise. It was great talking to you.

James C: 1:22:36

Martin from Pod Friend. And that's not just the only person that you have ended up speaking to. I'm meeting the folks from Fountain on Monday for a pub lunch. Harry. I mean, I mean, I'm assuming it's pub lunch, but you ended up having a chat with Oscar as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:56

yeah Oscar Mary lovely guy. New version of Fountain's coming out. And again one of the things that I think both Martin and Oscar are focusing on are transcripts and the lit tank so to the things from the name space and yeah Oscar told me everything that's going on about the new version of Fountain

James C: 2:07:27

Oscar Mary from Fountain. It's a free download Fountain Dot FM, which is a good thing, and you'll have heard both of them talking about the podcast name space that is closing Phase six June the first. Lots of exciting things in there. Sam What are the exciting things that you have your eyes on?

Sam Sethi: 2:07:45

well, the one that I'm most excited on is the pod roll. I think that's a really good new feature that's going to extend what people do with podcasting. You've already implemented it with Pod News Daily, and I think we've got I have to update it if a POD News weekly review, but it's a way for podcast host to say, look, these are the other podcasts in either my suite of podcasts or other podcasts I really like.

James C: 2:08:10

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 2:08:11

So

James C: 2:08:11

yeah,

Sam Sethi: 2:08:11

it's a very simple way to implement that and expose that to application developers

James C: 2:08:15

yeah. Which I think is a really good idea. So there's been a couple of little changes in there. Instead of a comma separated list of go, it sits now supporting the remote item instead. And really the reason why that's happening is to make life easier for for developers, because you don't need to take a comma separated list of goods and make that work. But it also means that you can do other things in a remote item's tag as well. So you can, if you want to link to a RSS feed as well, which I think is a mistake. But you know, there we are. And you can also link to episodes and various other things. So actually it made a bunch of sense to just

Sam Sethi: 2:09:00

to

James C: 2:09:00

make it a little bit easier to extend in in time to use a remote item inside. It's not that it's not made it anymore complicated, which I think is a is a good thing. But yeah, it's interesting seeing how quickly people proposed it, how quickly people jumped on board and. Then of course, there's been a little bit of changes as that's been made, a little bit more futureproof. But yeah, it's a good example of how this service can actually work. I think

Sam Sethi: 2:09:29

yeah, a couple of other ones that were in there. One that you wanted. James accepts guest A's now a proposal. So a very simple one which is do does this podcast have guests or does it not have guests? And the the other one I think you've already implemented as well in pod news to look at you look at the bleeding edge there.

James C: 2:09:48

Teacher's

Sam Sethi: 2:09:49

You've

James C: 2:09:49

pet.

Sam Sethi: 2:09:49

you've got the update frequency as well and tell me more about that one.

James C: 2:09:53

Yeah. So update frequency

Sam Sethi: 2:09:54

Yeah. So update

James C: 2:09:55

is just actually giving podcast applications a good clue as to when a show is actually being updated. Is it being updated, you know, daily? Is it updated every weekday as as the pod news Daily is for example, is it only every Friday as this one is, and so on and so forth. So allowing podcast directories to actually get that information from the RSS feed rather than have to work out roughly what that, you know, how it works is, is I think, quite useful. One of the benefits of it is that you can if you've got a limited time, so if you're doing a show which is, you know, six episodes during the summer and that's it, then you can actually put that in there so the, the algorithm won't get confused. And similarly, if you've got a show which is having a break at the moment, then you can also do that sort of thing as well. So I think there's a bunch of useful tools in there.

Sam Sethi: 2:10:58

Yeah. And also from an out developers point of view it also means we can look at the list once people start to implement and say, Oh, we don't need to poll, you know, we don't need to pull against that. And also one of the other additions

James C: 2:11:10

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 2:11:10

they're doing is they're putting a extra tag to say this podcast supports popping. So again, another for us to know whether we should be polling you in one way to get updates or another way. So yeah, I like them. The problem I've

James C: 2:11:24

yeah.

Sam Sethi: 2:11:24

got, James, is that

James C: 2:11:26

Oh

Sam Sethi: 2:11:27

hosts

James C: 2:11:27

yeah,

Sam Sethi: 2:11:27

need to get on board very quickly for this to work. So, you know, I know you

James C: 2:11:32

Yes,

Sam Sethi: 2:11:32

can sell for old RSS. That was great. So you added all of these yourself. But you know, the mass market is not going to go in and start creating, you know, RSS feed tag extensions for pod roles or accept guests

James C: 2:11:45

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 2:11:45

or update frequency. This has to be some good UI from host. And yeah, that's my

James C: 2:11:50

I

Sam Sethi: 2:11:50

worry

James C: 2:11:50

agree. And then, and this will be something that

Sam Sethi: 2:11:52

that

James C: 2:11:52

the podcast and its projects would be very good at if it was doing anything. So you know that that's exactly the sort of thing that the podcast and his projects that the people that have access to all of the large podcast hosting companies and indeed directories could be pushing people to, you know, to implementing and you know, if they felt strongly enough about it.

Sam Sethi: 2:12:16

we talked about the fact that Adam Curry and Dave Jones have been working on a way of allowing you to include music within your podcast. A couple of weeks ago on the podcast index show, they demonstrated how you could use something called a value time split, along with the remote item tag to integrate a music track into your podcast. And actually that music is then paid through the value for value system to stick with it. I am trying to get through this easy a can, but what it was was a very cool demonstration of how if you've got independent music who own their own rights, that that could be included in your podcast and that overcomes the problem of global rights for copyrighted music.

James C: 2:13:00

Yeah. Now I think it's certainly worthwhile

Sam Sethi: 2:13:02

Yeah, no, I think

James C: 2:13:03

taking

Sam Sethi: 2:13:03

you

James C: 2:13:03

a look at I love the idea of being able to change where the money goes, depending on what the content is. And again, it's using the remote item tag, but it's using it in a slightly different way. In this particular case. But it's pulling the the payment information from that. So that works quite nicely, I think. I think that's a very elegant plan, but that ends up allowing, you know, for example, Adam ended

Sam Sethi: 2:13:30

about

James C: 2:13:30

up

Sam Sethi: 2:13:30

playing

James C: 2:13:30

playing a song by Rusty Gate in Friday's

Sam Sethi: 2:13:33

on it.

James C: 2:13:33

episode, which instantly pushed it to number one in the music player Wave Lake, which is a music player that understands all this kind of stuff. So, you know, you can really see that there's a real, real opportunity there, but it works for post-production at the moment because you can't necessarily do it live. And perhaps that's something to have a look at in in the future. But pretty cool. I think.

Sam Sethi: 2:13:59

Adam's going back to deejaying. I can see this now. He starting a music

James C: 2:14:02

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 2:14:02

station got to happen,

James C: 2:14:04

yeah,

Sam Sethi: 2:14:04

going out and you're

James C: 2:14:05

yeah,

Sam Sethi: 2:14:05

going to have to get back into deejaying.

James C: 2:14:21

yeah. And I think he should call it Laca. Just just because I think that's the best the best Dutch word. So there we are. A couple of other things to have a quick peek at.

Sam Sethi: 2:14:33

Very

James C: 2:14:33

Nathan Garth, right. Has written a very good and interesting

Sam Sethi: 2:14:35

interesting

James C: 2:14:35

blog post which you'll find linked talking about making chapters and transcripts work well with

Sam Sethi: 2:14:42

dynamic

James C: 2:14:42

dynamic ad insertion. There are a number of different options that we have, some actually proposed by ACAST, so who knows? They might be a good a good plan. I think there are an awful lot of clever ideas and it's a bit sad that we've not really taken that particularly seriously. And perhaps that's one of the reasons why transcripts that don't necessarily appear to have to have taken off quite as fast as I thought that they were going to. It's a good post. You should go and have a look at it. It's on the Standard FM website. Also, Boom Caster has has released version two of their podcasting, a live streaming platform, which is very nice. Crowdcast is a clever piece of AI that is turning subreddits into their own podcast, which is all very clever. There's all kinds of AI generated shows out there and in the same time Spotify is throwing out, I made songs and throwing out bot farms which are listening to them, which is a very clever way of scamming Spotify for their for their money. So no surprise that they're ending up doing that. And talking about transcripts. I discovered something which Apple never really made a big announcement about. It's been the case for a long, long time on Google phones, on Google pixels that you can turn on live captions. You can also turn on live captions in Chrome browser on any device other than iOS. And what that basically does is it adds live captions to any media that you end up playing on that device. And that's a great thing. That's never been available on iPhone, but it turns out that it was sneaked out as a thing in the US and Canada with the release of one of the versions of iOS version 16. So if you are in the US or Canada or your phone is set to that, then Apple iPhone now offers live captions for any podcast you want to listen to and indeed anything else. And you can get those live captions on your phone just by delving into the accessibility area of the of the settings on your phone. Pretty cool. And it's really nice to see that Apple has come quite late to the party, but nevertheless has come to the party on that

Sam Sethi: 2:17:01

now events. James last week in Spain was Ecstasy on the podcast festival in Madrid. And I only mention it because they said there's a little over 300,000 podcast in Spain. These series took it 500 million plus Spanish language speakers in three key markets across the US Latin market, the Latin American market in Spain. And again, it was an event that sort of passed me by. But I thought again, as we're going to be doing a Barcelona news live, we should start to look a little broader.

James C: 2:17:36

Yes, I think that would be a wise plan, but certainly, yeah, a really interesting thing. Madrid going on, which is nice. Also a thing that you can't go to is the Dubai Pod fest, because that was held the other day. One of the speakers there was Michelle Cobb, who is executive director of the Podcast Academy. So good to see the podcast Academy out and about outside of the US, the Dubai Press Club that brought you the Dubai Pod Fest is also working with a large podcast platform in the country. Podio to work with content creators and Acast, too, has jumped into bed with two major Arabic language networks. That's just a that's just a phrase, not term and not actually what's happened out and kerning cultures network are now working with Acast That's the first big move from Acast into the Middle East and North African market. So there's some real movement in the in the Arabic language area, which is fun to end up seeing. Anyway, coming up, of course, we've got the podcast show, which is next week in London and the big news, the

Sam Sethi: 2:18:47

They

James C: 2:18:47

big news, Sam Sethi, is that

Sam Sethi: 2:18:50

yes

James C: 2:18:50

this show is going to be live, live, live

Sam Sethi: 2:18:54

no

James C: 2:18:54

on

Sam Sethi: 2:18:55

pressure.

James C: 2:18:55

the yes, on the

Sam Sethi: 2:18:57

Yeah,

James C: 2:18:57

Amplify Theatre Stage at the podcast show in London next week. We are the last word in podcasting news. We'll also be the last word on that stage because we will be there Thursday, May the 25th at 415 in the afternoon. Please, if you are there, please come along and

Sam Sethi: 2:19:13

we

James C: 2:19:14

see us because that theatre holds 400 people and I don't want it to be just you and me. So I'm on the stage and that's it. So for 15

Sam Sethi: 2:19:23

wow

James C: 2:19:24

Thursday, May the 25th

Sam Sethi: 2:19:25

this is what

James C: 2:19:26

at the podcast

Sam Sethi: 2:19:26

can we

James C: 2:19:27

show

Sam Sethi: 2:19:27

offer

James C: 2:19:27

in

Sam Sethi: 2:19:27

bears

James C: 2:19:27

London.

Sam Sethi: 2:19:27

or something. Can we

James C: 2:19:28

Yeah, well, I mean,

Sam Sethi: 2:19:29

do

James C: 2:19:29

you

Sam Sethi: 2:19:29

any

James C: 2:19:29

know,

Sam Sethi: 2:19:29

bribing?

James C: 2:19:29

maybe, maybe we should

Sam Sethi: 2:19:30

You know,

James C: 2:19:30

get some,

Sam Sethi: 2:19:30

maybe

James C: 2:19:31

you know,

Sam Sethi: 2:19:31

maybe

James C: 2:19:31

some

Sam Sethi: 2:19:31

we should

James C: 2:19:31

London

Sam Sethi: 2:19:31

get some.

James C: 2:19:32

pride cans of London pride for the first people to end up turning up. I do. I do know a few people who are going to turn up. They're going to ask questions, which is something

Sam Sethi: 2:19:41

Oh,

James C: 2:19:41

that I hadn't planned on. So who knows, maybe that's a thing. But

Sam Sethi: 2:19:45

maybe

James C: 2:19:46

yes,

Sam Sethi: 2:19:46

that

James C: 2:19:46

that would be good. The podcast

Sam Sethi: 2:19:47

be

James C: 2:19:47

show London Economy is where to get your tickets if you haven't got those already. And you should use the phrase pod news on the website and you'll get a discount talking about that.

Sam Sethi: 2:19:57

talking

James C: 2:19:57

I

Sam Sethi: 2:19:57

about

James C: 2:19:57

am

Sam Sethi: 2:19:57

that

James C: 2:19:57

the

Sam Sethi: 2:19:58

right

James C: 2:19:58

first keynote of the event in the Amplify Theatre on the Wednesday 9

Sam Sethi: 2:20:02

Wednesday

James C: 2:20:02

a.m.. The place only opens at 830, so please be early and come along and

Sam Sethi: 2:20:08

and

James C: 2:20:08

see

Sam Sethi: 2:20:08

come

James C: 2:20:09

me

Sam Sethi: 2:20:09

and see

James C: 2:20:10

talking

Sam Sethi: 2:20:10

me

James C: 2:20:10

about the year just gone and what we should be doing as an

Sam Sethi: 2:20:14

what

James C: 2:20:14

industry

Sam Sethi: 2:20:14

we should be doing.

James C: 2:20:14

as we move forward. Again,

Sam Sethi: 2:20:18

Yeah.

James C: 2:20:18

the podcast show London dot com is the place to go and all kinds of other things as well. Super.

Sam Sethi: 2:20:23

So

James C: 2:20:23

Looking forward to it. It should be a really good, good, enjoyable time. So yes, it makes me feel quite patriotic that we have such a good podcast experience in the UK. So. So there we go.

Sam Sethi: 2:20:37

now while the events are going on James.

James C: 2:20:39

Well, you've got Radio Days, North America,

Sam Sethi: 2:20:41

Well

James C: 2:20:41

which is happening

Sam Sethi: 2:20:42

North

James C: 2:20:42

in Toronto,

Sam Sethi: 2:20:42

America.

James C: 2:20:43

June the eighth and ninth. I am there also podcast movement in Denver, which is August the 21st to the 24th in Denver in Colorado, which I should be there and I haven't put my ticket yet for it. My airplane tickets. I should probably do that. I've already qualified for platinum this year, am I? And my flying year is only is only half done. So you can imagine how much flying I've done and it's all been in economy. So there's thing

Sam Sethi: 2:21:09

Wow.

James C: 2:21:10

also

Sam Sethi: 2:21:11

I thought you must have got an upgrade to first last buy. Now,

James C: 2:21:14

I get the occasional upgrade on points which of course I'm paying for really, but still let you go. Also, if you're doing

Sam Sethi: 2:21:21

also

James C: 2:21:21

something great in podcast measurement, if the idea of a 14 hour plane ride fills you with joy, and particularly if you would like to meet a kangaroo or a koala in person, then IAB, Australia here is looking for submissions to speak at their Measure Up conference, which is in Sydney in New South Wales on September the 13th. I would personally like some podcasting to be there, so if you are in podcast measurement, please to find out more details about that and get speaking it. Be great to have some folk speaking there. And of course the British Podcast Awards September the 28th in the UK as well, which we shouldn't forget about. What we also shouldn't forget about is Pod News Live. These are these are networking events that are happening all over the world and the first few are pot news live in Salford on the 13th of June Pod News live in London on the 27th of September. We will also be in Barcelona and in Mexico City and many more places. Pod news, dot net slash live has all of the information on where you can buy your tickets to. and there are more events both paid for and free at pod news, virtual events or events in a place with people. And if you're organising something, tell the world about it. It's free to be listed at pod news dot net slash events.

Jingles: 2:22:44

Booster. Graham Booster Graham. Corner Corner Corner on the Park News Weekly Review.

James C: 2:22:50

Yes, it's our favorite time of the week. It's boost to Graham Corner. And just to boost to talk about this week a big Israel boost at 19 for $0.80. Thank you Brian of London who boosts us and says think it's been too long since I boosted I think it has Brian best regards from Brian taking incoming rocket fire in Israel. Oh, good goodness. Well, stay safe and and Adam Curry quite rightly asking us to correct the mistaken mention of the name space changing to another name 10,000 SATs. if this is what it takes to get booster Graham's from Adam Curry, then then maybe we should make more mistakes. Um, I would get mentions in in that show as well. So always a good thing. Anyway Adam thank you so much for your boost as well. If you get value from what we do, the Pod News weekly review is separate from pod news and Sam and I share everything from it. We really appreciate your support so we can continue making the show and we can continue doing other things too. You can become a power supporter. Weekly Dot Pod News Dot Net. You can subscribe in Apple Podcasts at Apple Echo slash pod news or support us with SATs by hitting the boost button in your podcast app. And if you don't have one pod news dot net slash new podcast apps will help you find a new app.

Sam Sethi: 2:24:18

James, what's happened for you this week?

James C: 2:24:20

Well, I'm glad you asked, Sam. It has your breath. For some reason, the New Zealand Podcast Summit, which, of course was the end of last week, it's really enjoyed being in Auckland in New Zealand. That was a really enjoyable time. I found a couple of good brew pubs, which is good. Always a fan of that and great to see so many friends from New Zealand, which is good, and also took part in the podcast launch Agencies Free 12 hour live event on Monday, which was good fun too. And I spoke at an event which I thought was really interesting. It was an event in Milan, in Italy. It was called Give Your Brand A Voice. It was run by the OBI Podcast Committee, which is all about branded podcasts, and I was the first speaker of the day talking about how branded podcasts are being used from across Europe and across the world, which is nice. And I've just been confirmed as a speaker at Radio Days Asia, which is happening in Kuala Lumpur, which I have been to the last couple of radio days, Asia's, and they are really it's a really interesting place to just learn a little bit more about a different world in terms of podcasting. And radio is the fifth to the 6th of September in Kuala Lumpur radio days. Asia Tor.com is the website address for that. What have you been doing, Sam? Other than that, you're clearly rushing to get somebody at the door.

Sam Sethi: 2:25:54

Yeah. I've been also rushing to get a product out the door,

James C: 2:25:57

Oh, yes, I've heard of this.

Sam Sethi: 2:25:59

Yes. So finally, finally, finally pulled funds are. We will be available as this recording goes live on Friday sending out all the waitlist invites have been amassing on our service. So thank you to everyone and thank you for your patience SO. Yes, not only does pot rent start to come out and also a new version of Fountain, but you'll also be able to play with pop fans as well. So yeah, that's been a

James C: 2:26:23

And where and where do we get that then? Sam Seth, Pod

Sam Sethi: 2:26:26

pot fans

James C: 2:26:26

Fan start

Sam Sethi: 2:26:27

in

James C: 2:26:27

FM.

Sam Sethi: 2:26:27

guess that's the place to go and yeah it's only available on the desktop at the moment. It's in Alpha, it's it's feature complete but obviously we now need to make it mobile ready. So yeah, we'd love your feedback, love your thoughts, just be gentle. It is an alpha, but yeah, we've taken a while to do it, get it right rather than rush it out the front door. But yeah, have a play

James C: 2:26:48

Very cool. Well, I'm looking forward to having a play with that on the many travels that I have. And goodness, I've got a fair bit of travel over the next month or so. That's it for this week. Thank you so much to those getting hyped and why I'm saying that. And that's it for this week.

Sam Sethi: 2:27:06

and thank you to all our guest this week. You can give us feedback using e mail to weekly output news dot net or send us a boost grab if your podcast doesn't support boosting grub, a new app from pot news dot net or slash new podcast apps

James C: 2:27:19

Yes. And

Sam Sethi: 2:27:20

and

James C: 2:27:21

please come and see this show live on stage at the end of the podcast show London The Amplify Theatre on Thursday for 15. We'd love to see you there. Our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila D, who I've just annoyed by asking for more voice overs for that show, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Sprout Podcast Hosting Made Easy.