James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 23rd of June 2023.

Jingle: 0:04

The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Sethi.

James Cridland: 0:13

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News, back here at home in Australia.

Sam Sethi: 0:17

And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of PodFans.

James Cridland: 0:19

In the chapters today. Finally, Spotify bring out their Supremium tier. But what's new? Why didn't Spotify podcasts pay me? Someone asks what's new with Spotify's redesigned desktop app. Why were Prince Harry and Meghan Markle called effing grifters by a Spotify exec? Language warning for later. Apple announces enhanced search with new categories. Acast launches Acast Plus Access. And is Facebook really the fourth biggest podcast platform? No, This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzzsprout. Last week, 3,163 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with powerful tools and remarkable customer support. And now AI to help you publish your show and buy Pod News Live in London this September. Tickets are available now at podnewsnet slash live.

Jingle: 1:09

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:14

So, James, let's kick it off with a couple of thank yous. First of all, Skypearlsbury, thank you so much for standing in for me While I was away remancing the wife earning some brownie points. It's Stratford watching a bit of Shakespeare and trying not to fall asleep. All three things were achieved, Wow.

Sam Sethi: 1:33

Can't say that was the most thrilling night of my life. But there you go. But other than that, thank you also to everyone who came to the podcast live in Manchester. It was great to see you all and especially thank you to Mark Asquith for a wonderful review. If you haven't heard it, check it out on the podcast accelerator This latest episode. Thank you, mark. Spotify adds to premium tier. Yes, well done, very nice little play Friend of the show, ashley Carmen, has said that she's scooped that Spotify is planning to add a new high tier premium price that's coming this month, allegedly, and basically all I can see James from it is they're adding high fidelity audio, which they've been promising for two years, and it's finally here. So what else is new about this wonderful new tier that we're all going to pay for?

James Cridland: 2:23

Well, it's Spotify Hi-Fi and it's expanded access to audio books. Apparently, subscribers will be given a specific number of free hours or titles per month, and the first thing I would say is high fidelity audio. Almost everybody does not care. Knowing what I know from the radio business, you know if audio is good enough quality, then audio is good enough quality. So there's really no point in spending more, and certainly nobody's going to spend any more for that. So presumably it's just an audio book play, i'm guessing. But yeah, interestingly though, debuting in overseas markets before launching in the US, which is weird.

Sam Sethi: 3:06

Well, i think that's more a case of if it screws up, hey, no one's going to know about it in the US, that's fine by us.

James Cridland: 3:12

That might well be it Might well be it.

Sam Sethi: 3:16

But I don't think this will get Spotify to profitability, which is really what it's all about. I mean, the 200 people dropped and all the exclusives disappearing left, right and Charlie. They won't get to profitability by adding a pound per subscriber, if they get even, as you just said, a few percent of their existing subscribers to upgrade.

James Cridland: 3:35

Yeah, yeah. No, i don't think there's going to be any particular excitement there. I think it's just keeping up with the Joneses. Obviously, apple has a lossless plan, amazon has a lossless plan as well, or at least a high-fi plan, as of course, does Tidal and various other things. So I think it's just a case of keeping up with the Joneses and giving fewer reasons for people to walk away.

Sam Sethi: 3:59

The price elasticity of this deal is greater than one, which means they can't really increase the price because customers will abandon ship and go elsewhere. So they haven't really got a lot of flexibility on the price. They couldn't really stick it up by three or four pounds or three or four dollars, so they are a little bit tied into just keeping up with the Joneses, the Amazons and the Apples. A friend of the show, eric Newsom, said it brilliantly. He said they've spent a billion dollars to become a-cast. I thought that was very funny when I read that. Wow. But yeah, i mean, look, they still haven't got their audiobooks deal sorted out.

Sam Sethi: 4:39

Eric is chargeable, but again, it's such a high percentage of goes to companies. Would they not consider changing their model? Their fixed-cost subscription model, which is what this is, needs to go to a variable model? Would they not charge for podcasts? I mean that seems an obvious thing to move to where you can then get more money. I mean, look at Netflix, james right, you pay your subscription, you get loads of free stuff, but anything that's high quality, like a new film, or you're always paying a little bit extra. You're always nudging you to pay. Oh yeah, but that's the new film, so you can pay $15.99 for that one if you want it early, couldn't they?

James Cridland: 5:16

do that with podcasting?

James Cridland: 5:17

I mean they could, but they've just essentially done deals with lots of people to basically say, no, we're not going to do exclusives anymore.

James Cridland: 5:24

So if they start wanting to do exclusives now, then that would be a real about face. I mean, the Trevor Noah announcement that they made earlier on in the week is not an exclusive, and it said that in the second paragraph of the press release that this is going to be available across all platforms. So I can't see them turning around and wanting to charge extra for some of those shows. It could just be that the music service on Spotify is the thing that they have to have, is the thing that keeps people paying their $9.99 a month or however much it is, and then the podcasts are the thing that earns their money through the advertising model, in the same way that a cast is earning money and then in the same way that other people are earning money, and the benefit the Spotify has is it's got both on platform consumption and off platform consumption through the Spotify audience network on things like Apple podcasts and pocket casts and everything else. So perhaps actually podcasting is the white knight riding in to save podcasting's world.

Sam Sethi: 6:33

Well, let's see what happens. We'll see the pickup of this new deal when it comes out. Now, spotify didn't pay me. Not me, james, not you, and it's certainly not a statement from the Sussexes either. That's coming up later. Allegedly, a Redditor claims that Spotify aka while it was anchored didn't pay him the $700 he was owed and they shut down his podcast. And yeah, now did you read the story on this one?

James Cridland: 6:59

Yeah, well, he was owed. he or her was owed over $700. He wasn't able to withdraw the money, so he emailed customer support and asked what the issue was, and basically they spend a month or so trying to understand why this bloke couldn't take out his $700. And then, all of a sudden, the podcast was shut down And all he got was an email saying please be advised, anchor has a policy to terminate inappropriate circumstances, the accounts of repeat infringers. Best regards anchor, which is interesting. So there are a few things that kind of make me a little bit confused by this. Firstly, they're talking about anchor, and anchor hasn't actually existed since February, but also, secondly, the bloke who posted this onto Reddit. He was asked what's your podcast then? And he basically doesn't want to say So yeah, okay, so it's not A few red flags there.

James Cridland: 8:06

Yeah, there's a fair amount of red flags there, i do notice in the comments. Congratulations on getting this complaint mentioned in today's pod news. I saw that as well, which is always entertaining. But yeah, so you never quite know with any of these stories. I'm sure that every single podcast company has some bad stories such as this. But yeah, that's about as far as it goes. I guess.

Sam Sethi: 8:34

Yeah, i normally wouldn't talk about this story actually myself either, because I think it is a molehill turned into a mountain, but it is a good example of that. You know, people are still allowing themselves to be paid by third party gateway keepers. This is my pitch. People have to start to learn about value for value. It does exist. Micro payments are simple. You can get an Orbi wallet. It is a direct pay to peer to peer payment And so, in that sense, if this was a true $700, yes, spotify could have kept 10%. He would have had the money directly in his wallet. There would be no issue. And I still believe. I think and we keep seeing stories about advertising. You know, in one hand it's growing, but we're seeing all these layoffs. Prices don't seem to work. I still think people haven't woken up to value for value yet, and this is just a good example of where, if it was a value for value solution, it'd have the money in his wallet by now.

James Cridland: 9:36

Well, yes, potentially, although of course, people do like to keep hold of their money, and you know, and only pay when they absolutely have to.

James Cridland: 9:44

So I'm not necessarily sure that that would fix that.

James Cridland: 9:47

I mean, the real issue here is that you know it's a third party, as you say, and the fact that you know his podcast is on anchor and or Spotify for podcasting, as it is now, and you know it's basically up to them.

James Cridland: 10:03

And if they want to turn around and just mysteriously terminate your entire account for some reason And, by the way, reasons that you know he's asked, you know, tell me how I broke the rules, and they've never come back to him, apparently, and you can see that happening with other things. I mean, you know, all of my business is done on a Google account And Google could, if they wanted to, tomorrow, cancel my account for whatever reason they wanted to and essentially bankrupt my company. That's quite a risk, i think, but it's a risk that I would imagine that most of us are actually dealing with, the fact that You know so much of our stuff is held on other services and other platforms. So perhaps that's one wake-up call and perhaps we should all be self hosting, although crikey, self hosting email is not for the, you know not not for anybody.

Sam Sethi: 11:00

Really, not everything needs to get yeah, not everything. Now Spotify staying with them for a few seconds. Spotify redesigned their desktop app. I had a quick look at it. Have you seen it, james?

James Cridland: 11:11

I haven't seen it because I don't I don't use Spotify that much, so but you know, yeah, it looks nice. They've added a few things. I mean, what they basically had done is they had completely ignored That desktop app for many years. So it's nice to see that they have, you know, given it a lick of paint, added some new features in there. I can't see the quite fancy thing that used to be in there about what your friends are listening to, which only used to appear in The desktop app, but I don't know if it's still there It is.

Sam Sethi: 11:43

Yeah, i thought I'd check in and see what happens. So, down the right hand column used to be what your friends are listening to and connect to Facebook not that anyone uses Facebook and The that's still there. So what happens is, if you're listening to music or podcasts, the right hand column will now give you Metadata about what you're listening to. But if you then decide to go to settings and turn on What my friends are listening to, that right hand column of metadata about music and podcast disappears and it gets replaced. So, yeah, the right hand column basically has just become a changeable column depending on what you wanted to show right, right.

James Cridland: 12:21

Well, there we are. I don't know how many people use the desktop app. I would imagine that it's quite popular at work with programmers and stuff like that, but yeah, but I don't know how many people use that, and certainly how many people use it. A desktop app to listen to Podcasts is quite another thing, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 12:41

Now here's the title from Bill Simmons Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are called effing grifters by the Spotify exec after their 20 million archetype Podcasts act. Why did he call?

James Cridland: 12:55

them that, james? Well, why would he call them that? Here's. Here's a little clip of him, of him saying that, and I've edited out a vowel So you'll never guess what the word was. You do a lot of business deals a lot of negotiations I do.

Jingle: 13:07

I wish I'd been involved in the Megan and Harry leave Spotify negotiation. The fucking grifters that's the podcast.

James Cridland: 13:13

We should have lunch with them. Yes, oh, that was the version where I didn't edit. Yeah, there you go. Why a senior exec for Spotify is Allowed to just shoot his mouth off in this way, heaven only knows. But because Spotify and the Sussexes Both said on Thursday night that they have mutually agreed to part ways and they said very positive things about each other in The conversation. And then you have Bill Simmons Popping up over the weekend shooting his mouth off, it seems. It seems as if there's one Unprofessional person here, and it's not Megan Markle, it's Bill bloody Simmons, to be honest.

Sam Sethi: 13:56

Yeah, i guess when you've got 200 million in your bank account and you've had a few beers, you don't really care what's being said.

James Cridland: 14:01

I guess not. So yeah, and he then goes on to say I've got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the zoom I had with Harry's trying to help him with a podcast idea. It's one of my best stories, i mean I suppose you know he's there, he's producing a podcast for himself. He wants to make that podcast as exciting as he can possibly.

James Cridland: 14:21

I was more interested, though, with the other story, which was Will Page, friend of the show, former chief economist at Spotify, who indeed I saw last week. It turned out that I was on the same plane as he was, so I managed to catch a lift into town with him, which was very kind, but anyway, he was on BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight and he ended up saying this Harry and Meghan earned more than Blinding Lights, which was by the fantastic Canadian Bander weekend, and there's the most streamed song ever on Spotify, which is not bad for 12 hours work. So I'm just fascinated by this. The Harry and Meghan have earned more than the most streamed song ever on the platform, which I think goes to tell you that there's something not quite right in how Dawn Ostroff and that crew Ended up doing their weird and wonderful podcast deals.

Sam Sethi: 15:17

Yeah, i mean the 200 million or whatever it is, to Joe Rogan and all these other deals. Wow, i suppose if you've got a billion the way What was Richard Brunson said, you know how to make a million out of airline. Start with a billion and work your way down. That's what they're doing with Spotify.

James Cridland: 15:36

There's that going on. There's also Joe Rogan many Congratulations who's published episode two thousand of his podcast and Only this week has been laying into scientists about vaccinations and everything else and being a Stupid idiot. What an unpleasant man that man is Really. You couldn't ask for a worse person. And if Bill Simmons is embarrassed to be sharing Spotify with with Prince Harry, why the hell isn't he embarrassed about sharing Spotify with somebody that that thinks that science is a bad thing? A dreadful, horrible man. So many congratulations, joe Rogan, reaching two thousand shows of your hate-filled podcast. Many Congratulations anyway.

James Cridland: 16:22

Moving on, spotify has also announced. Spotify, of course, a company that made 200 people redundant two weeks ago Is it? can they have a thing called Spotify Beach and a big announcement that Trevor Noah Has a new podcast, a new Spotify original podcast, not not an exclusive, as we were saying earlier. He made that announcement with Daniel Eck. Also, at the Spotify Beach, there was the host of call me daddy, alex Cooper, who was talking about the art of great interviews, which must have been absolutely thrilling for the advertising people. But there you go. So that was on the Spotify Beach. Meanwhile, iheart Media, which has also made a ton of people redundant this year they had Paris Hilton DJing an official after party on the iHeart yacht, promoting a new podcast called the history of the world's greatest nightclubs. The world has gone mad, sam The world has gone mad.

Sam Sethi: 17:25

So no chance for us to go to Cannes next year.

James Cridland: 17:28

No, The world has gone. absolutely mad I was asked if I was going to Cannes this year. No, why on earth would I be going to Cannes? What would I want to be going to Cannes for, with all of these dreadful people there? No, no.

Sam Sethi: 17:43

Okay, that's a no. Then You heard it here first, folks There will not be a pod news live from Cannes next year. Well, yeah, anyway, anyway, let's move on Moving on. Yes, that's enough Spotify for one week. Apple announced they've enhanced their search with new subcategories. So Apple have enhanced their search. They've added nine subcategories, recommendations and language searches in select countries. James, tell me more about this.

James Cridland: 18:11

All it basically is is it's some additional fields appearing in the search tab on the Apple Podcasts app, so you can now more easily go in and find shows about mental health or shows about relationships and so on and so forth, which is all very nice. You can also, in some markets, look at shows in other languages, so you know. So that's handy if your app is in one language but you actually speak a bunch of others as well. So here in Australia, for example, there's a bunch of different languages that you can enjoy. It's marked podcasts by language And you can go diving in there, and I can choose from Arabic, chinese, hindi, italian, spanish and Vietnamese, which all makes sense for this market. I didn't know you could speak all those languages.

James Cridland: 19:06

I speak none of those languages, but nevertheless, that's all quite nice, but, yes, so that's basically it. Of course, ios 17 has launched its first beta developers build this week as well. Now, my iPhone 8 isn't getting it at the moment. I don't know whether that's because it's an iPhone 8 and it'll never get it. It'll never get it.

Sam Sethi: 19:28

You're off the list. Am I off the list now?

Jingle: 19:29

You're below the line now.

Sam Sethi: 19:31

Really officially Yes you're below the line officially. Well, there you go. I think there's a point at which you might have to upgrade eventually.

James Cridland: 19:38

It's not a phone that I use that much, because you know, obviously I use a real phone, but you know it's still weird.

Sam Sethi: 19:44

Well, you've had all these features for about two years on Android, haven't you?

James Cridland: 19:48

Yeah, well, yeah, exactly exactly. Including support for episode images and the support for episode images at the moment in the new iOS 17 version of Apple Podcast is looking really, really nice. Now, apple gets very upset if you start talking about the beta version, because we're not supposed to, but all I'd say is make sure that you've got your episode artwork. If I have a hint and tip for you is, make sure it's a nice image and any text that you have is in the top half of the image, because the bottom half of the image may be overwritten by other stuff on the Apple Podcasts app. So just saying But, yeah, but it's looking quite smart and cool, so it'll be nice to see that once it's out of beta and we can talk about it a little bit more.

Sam Sethi: 20:38

So this is a genuine question Do I have to update my categories in Apple now to these additional new subcategories?

James Cridland: 20:46

Yeah, no, there's nothing additional that anybody needs to do. It's just purely that these subcategories are now being treated in the Apple Podcasts app as more important categories, if you like, so they're just appearing in a few more places. It also means that they get new noteworthy shows, they get shows of the month, you know all that kind of stuff, so almost as if they've been elevated to real categories within the app. So there's nothing for anybody to end up doing. What it might mean is that if your show fits into those subcategories rather better than in the main category, then you might get some benefit out of that. But that's about as far as it goes.

Sam Sethi: 21:29

Now this explore podcast by language. It says creators can specify the language for their podcast using Apple Podcast Connect, via all, via RSS, using the hosting provider. Is this a new field within podcast Connect so that you're stating your language?

James Cridland: 21:46

No, it's not. It's not a new field And it's the field which has existed ever since Dave Weiner invented RSS, or at least Dave Weiner worked on RSS for podcasting. So, yes, it's a language field which most podcast, most podcasters will set, sometimes not correctly, but nevertheless, most past, most podcasters will set. So I think it's a, lang, l, a, n, g and it's right at the top, but I could be wrong. So I'm just going to double check and see if I can see where it is language. It is just a simple language, and so the pod news daily is in English, en. But you can probably select en dash gb, which would be ours, which would be English, british, british English, correct, correct English, yes, so, yes, so there's nothing new in that, and in fact the podcast index has been supporting that language tag and has been ingesting that language tag into the podcast index data as well. So if you wanted to build something that only searches German language podcasts, then knock yourself out, because you can already do that with the podcast index. Hmm.

Sam Sethi: 23:06

Now a cast. Christina Brenton has said that programmatic ads are vital for podcasting. She said on Steve and a Goldstein podcast this week, only 13% of a cast current audio ads are transacted programmatically. What's she mean, james? I don't unpack that for me.

James Cridland: 23:24

Well, so she is saying and you will be able to read this interview in full in the podcast business journal this week She is basically saying look, not very many advertisers are buying programmatically right now. So quite a lot of advertisers are going into the A cast catalog and saying, oh well, I would like to buy, you know pod, save the UK, or I would like to buy the rest is politics or whatever it might be. I hope that both of those are A casts. I think they are, But you know what I mean. And so what she is basically saying is stop stop doing that and buy podcasts based on programmatic tools instead by by podcasts that you know.

James Cridland: 24:07

If you, if you're looking for podcasts that are talking about politics, then by podcast that are talking about politics. Don't go in there and cherry pick the individual shows that you actually want And that, and that, of course, will help them in terms of monetizing the long tail And that'll help, you know, smaller shows get more money because, of course, then they can actually be sold a lot better. So at the moment, I was surprised at seeing that only 13% of shows ad buys are being done on a programmatic way within a cast, And you can see that there's real opportunity for them to boost that and to grow that a little bit more. Hence the conversation that Christiana had with Steven Goldstein earlier on.

Sam Sethi: 24:57

Moving on, then This one I had to take a double take on. You reported on Westwood One, and Signal Hill Insights have released data suggesting that. Wait for it. The fourth largest podcast platform is Facebook. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they close Facebook podcasts about two years ago?

James Cridland: 25:16

Yes, Facebook doesn't have a podcast player. So the question was so the way that this data was produced is they asked 608 weekly podcast consumers which of the following places do you use the most to access the podcasts you listen to? And the fourth largest podcast platform that came back from that question was Facebook. Now what the researchers are basically saying here is that actually they've probably answered it. Where do you see promotion for the podcast that you listen to? They're probably following people on podcasts that they really enjoy And maybe that reminds them to go and listen to the podcast, and blah, blah, blah.

James Cridland: 26:03

But I think this really highlights to me that quite a lot of the survey research that you see out there is just nonsense, Because if you're asking people which of these places do you use to access the podcast you listen to, they're responding with something that doesn't even play podcasts. Then I think, yeah, you can really look at quite a lot of these surveys and go. Are they telling us anything that might be actually true here or not? Signal Hill Insights great company. They put together an awful lot of really good survey data. Westwood One reports on a lot of this survey data and they're also very, very good as well, But what I'd say on this is that it does show the problems about living on survey data and why I'm much more interested in supporting things like OP3. I'm much more interested in supporting, you know, PodTrack and the Triton Rankers and all of this kind of stuff Basically data that is coming out of log files, not what people reckon they're doing, because, as is very clear from this, it's just nonsense.

Sam Sethi: 27:18

As Henry Ford would say, they just want faster horses. Now, moving on, mags Creative, which is based out of London, has signed a deal with CAA which will enable them to identify adaptations across film, tv publishing and live entertainment based on the studio's podcast IP. Friend of the show. Hannah Russell, who runs Mags Creative, probably will be able to tell us more about this James at our PodNews Live in London, because she will be one of our guests.

James Cridland: 27:49

Indeed, yes, and I'm very much looking forward to hearing from her at our business podcasting networking event. Podnewsnet slash live is where to get tickets. But this is the sort of thing where a large company, a large talent organization CAA will be helping them understand. You know what they can be doing across film and TV and publishing and live entertainment based on the shows that Mags Creative have been working on And it's really good to see. I mean, that's a small independent podcast production company based in London run by women. It's a good story for the UK and for women-run organizations and all of that. So many congratulations to them. I look forward to learning a little bit more.

Sam Sethi: 28:46

Let's have a whiz around the world. James, Let's do that.

James Cridland: 28:48

Yes, let's, and we'll start in Germany. German podcasts have earned $42 million US dollars from podcast advertising in 2022. But according to Fern Uni, which has conducted a study into what type of podcast advertising works best, the conclusion is ads work better if they're related to the subject matter of the podcast. There's a big Did somebody get paid for that? There's a big, massive surprise.

Sam Sethi: 29:16

I was going to say DER the obvious conclusion to a report.

James Cridland: 29:22

Yeah, but it's nice to see that. I mean, it's backing up a hunch, i think, and backing up something that seems obvious. So it's nice to actually see that there's some science behind that. So you know, that's probably not a bad plan really. In Portugal there's a new branded podcast company. It seems all of the rage at the moment. It's called ZECO Podcast Creative Agency And it's run by a consultancy called Widecom And here in Australia a very perplexing thing which I wish I could give you more information on, but I really don't understand it.

James Cridland: 30:01

We have two very large commercial radio companies here. One of them is called SCA, used to stand for Southern Cross-Ostereo, now it officially stands for Nothing And one of them is called ARN Media. Arn stands for Australian Radio Network right And ARN Media, which is the number two in the market, has bought 14.7% of SCA, the number one in the market And actually it's bought as much as it possibly can because media ownership laws are pretty fierce here and they are not allowed to own more than 15% of the shares because otherwise they have to go out and sell an awful lot of radio licenses. So why you would get the number two buying as much as it possibly can into the number one radio broadcaster and, indeed, podcast maker. Heaven alone knows, but still, there you go.

James Cridland: 30:55

Why is it interesting in terms of podcasting? Because SCA owns Listener and ARN owns the I Heart Podcast Network Australia, both of whom are number one in the podcast ranker weirdly, number one for different things. So, yeah, i wish I understood why they were doing. It Seems a bit of a weird thing to basically spend your money in a company that you're competing with, but perhaps they know something about media ownership laws that we don't. But, however, it's working. interesting to end up seeing Sorry.

Sam Sethi: 31:26

You say there's a. You've got media laws down there, Doesn't Rupert Murdoch just own every newspaper down in Australia?

James Cridland: 31:32

I mean you're saying that as if it's a joke, but in Queensland Rupert Murdoch genuinely owns every single newspaper that isn't a newspaper that is published in Queensland which isn't published by Rupert Murdoch. But apparently that's fine. But you're only allowed to own two FM radio stations in one particular area. So yeah, i don't really understand why the rules are different in terms of broadcast to in terms of papers. Well, i kind of do, because it's a finite amount of public spectrum, i suppose. But yes, you know blah, blah, blah. So yeah, so who knows what's going on there? but quite interesting anyway.

Sam Sethi: 32:19

Maybe we should interview somebody from one of those two companies to find out. But anyway, moving on, good luck with that. Now you pay your money, you get your reports right. So Nielsen has released its audio today report, which says that Americans use broadcast radio, podcasts, streaming satellite, and it claims comedy is the most popular podcast genre. And then you go to Pew Research and they will tell you in the USA the most top-ranked podcasts are true crime. And if you go to Republican states in the USA it says true crime is the most popular James. What is it? Is it true crime? comedy? but clearly not news. What's the most popular genre?

James Cridland: 33:01

Well, i'm not sure that I care particularly much, but yeah, i would think that most of the research that I've seen suggests that true crime is the most popular. Now, of course, some of this is what again? what do you call most popular? Is it the most listeners, the most downloads? Because those are different. So what's going on there? Who knows? But the Pew Research data talks about top-ranked podcasts. I queried how did you work out top-ranked podcasts? And they said, well, we had a look at the Apple podcast charts. Oh, brilliant, because of course that, yes, it's top-ranked, which means absolutely nothing at all, but it certainly doesn't mean top-downloaded or top-listens to, because that's not what the Apple podcast charts measure. So I kind of queried the validity of much of the Pew Research data. Apparently, they've used podchaser data and various other things as well. That's all fine.

James Cridland: 34:02

Not quite sure how Nielsen worked out their data in terms of audio today. Nielsen's very strange because they've released this audio today data And I said so where is it on the website then, so I can link people to it? And they said, oh, it's not on the website. So, yeah, so you can't actually do that. And I'm there thinking, well, how, why, what? None of that makes an awful lot of sense. But anyway, their data I've just looked it up comes from the Nielsen-Scarborough Podcast Buying Power Study, which is a whole year's worth of data between May 22 to May 23. And they say that in May 2023, there were 28 million listeners to comedy and 23 million listeners to news podcasts. So, yeah, say what you think about all of that, but that's basically how they've worked that out. I would suggest to you that Nielsen-Scarborough Podcast Buying Power is a study in the same way that we were talking a little bit earlier about that study with Signal Hill Insights and Westwood One, and I'm not necessarily sure that that's particularly helpful. But anyway, still, there you go.

Sam Sethi: 35:27

Yeah, the last one on these reports is found in Friends of the Shows. Why is found in? you're an advisor, you can tell us all the answers now, james. Why is found in putting out Republican States Preferred True Kind Podcast and News Podcast? Now, it doesn't surprise me that right-wing Republican red states love fake news. Sorry, fox News, but why is found?

James Cridland: 35:48

in putting out Why would found in be interested in this? It's very niche. Yes, i asked that question and I said what a weird press release to be sending out. And also they haven't put your logo on the graphics, so you're not going to get the benefit out of it. And Nick from Fountain turned around to me and said oh yeah, this is just a piece of SEO. So it's literally a piece of SEO work. Well, if work, then in Goddard coverage To find people stupid enough to link to that particular story and also credit fountain.

Sam Sethi: 36:19

So I've fallen for that, and then haven't I Well, and then I've added it. So, well done, nick, you've got us both then Yeah exactly In jobs, lots of entertaining people and moves.

James Cridland: 36:32

David Mayer Roberts has been appointed as board advisor to 1860, which is a branded podcast production company based in Bristol in the UK. It's lush good. Lush S C P R, which is the owner of LAist Studios, is making 21 people redundant. That's 10% of the staff. They, of course, own radio stations as well. They blame two things which I thought was interesting Firstly, softness in the advertising business, which doesn't come as any surprise to anybody, but also a pullback of promotional efforts by Hollywood Studios amid the writer's strike. So the writer's strike is actually having difficulties for the whole creative economy now, which seems a bit of an own goal, but still, there we go. Barry Spinkle and Giann Berry have been promoted to co-heads of Pineapple Street Studios.

James Cridland: 37:25

Lots of changes in order. See the other co-founder of Pineapple Street, max Linsky, has now been named Senior Podcast Strategist for Audit's podcast division, and there is also a job going at Spotify if you'd like to work for them. I mean, they've just made 200 people redundant, so what could possibly go wrong? Anyway, it's senior editor. Audio books in London. They are growing their world-class audio book editorial team, they say, looking for individuals who can connect amazing stories with just the right moods, moments and genres to listeners who will love them. That's all very exciting. Anyway, if you're looking for a job, pod News has podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world. They're free to post as well. It just takes two minutes. Podnewsnet slash jobs The tech stuff.

Jingle: 38:17

Tech stuff On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 38:21

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 first in your great big long list, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 38:30

It's the bit I love. Now I sort of snip it from Sophia Chapman, who works for SimpleCast. It said SimpleCast now supports the podcast TXT element. Now that's one of the prerequisites to be a member of the podcast standards group. And I thought, oh, now I don't really talk about SimpleCast much. I sort of they exist but we never really touch upon them, bit like Libsyn. And it just piqued my interest. So I reached out to her and yeah, they are getting involved in the podcast namespace. So this is their first entry, i guess.

James Cridland: 39:02

Yes, so the podcast text element is a useful tool when you're claiming things. I know that you have a real issue with the podcast text thing Pointless. And you want something that also works. Oh, look at this. You have an announcement to make.

Sam Sethi: 39:20

Yes, i, basically have been talking to various CTOs of hosting companies saying look, can we please put in something like podcast, verify and actually do an OAuth model, which I think you talked about two, maybe three years ago. It could be.

James Cridland: 39:38

Yes, this was my idea for how to claim a podcast was to use something very similar to OAuth. Yeah, absolutely.

Sam Sethi: 39:47

Now I understand why Adam gets frustrated when he says why isn't anyone implementing cross app comments? Well, i am getting really frustrated because hosts don't care. Right, hosts have got the client and he signed up or she signed up. But for app providers I did it yesterday with somebody I said, right, claim your podcast. And we had to go through this stupid loop of going back and forth of them putting in their email, back in, resubmitting their RSS feed, blah, blah, blah, and it took forever and it's not going to scale. So I am personally going to donate £1,000 to the favorite charity of any podcast host who implements it first, because if it doesn't get done by just pleading, i'll do it with bare raw money and bribery. That's what I'm saying. So if you're a podcast host and you're the first to implement something called podcast verify and you can work with me, i'll give you £1,000 for your favorite charity.

James Cridland: 40:43

Well, there's a thing. Yes, I noticed in some of the conversations in the GitHub how many people are just basically turning around and saying, well, we're not going to be doing anything with our author because it's far too complicated. So it's just, you know, and that was the reason, the original reason why it was kicked out.

James Cridland: 41:06

It's not It's because, oh, it sounds a bit too complicated, We don't want to end up doing that, And it's so not complicated, but still, there we go. That's the way of these things, And again I keep on saying firstly, this is the thing that the do you remember that podcast standards thing I do vaguely.

James Cridland: 41:29

The podcast standards project that basically made some form of announcement And we've heard absolutely not a thing from them ever since. We've heard nothing in terms of anything that they're working on. Pocketcast still hasn't joined them. We've heard absolutely nothing. What a complete waste of time. That was Utter, utter, complete waste of time.

James Cridland: 41:54

I regret giving them any oxygen of PR, because you know what a complete waste of time that was, so that's entirely useless. But it's that sort of body. If you know, if that sort of body ever got going, that would be the body to basically be pushing as many of their members as possible to get going with some sort of easy way for podcasters to be able to claim their shows. I'm currently doing exactly that with the podcast business journals spotlight podcast, which currently is with somebody else on Apple podcasts, and I now need to go into Apple podcasts and try and convince them to transfer that over to me. It's a mess, but clearly, since nobody cares about that sort of thing, it's frustrating. So I wish you all of the luck and I hope that you lose a thousand dollars Quite happily To a good charity, because that would be a good step.

Sam Sethi: 42:57

I mean I won't go into who, but you know very nice person and I worked very closely. We got 90% or 95% down the road of getting this working, and then I've just not heard from them since. And basically, it's a field in the RSS. There's a unique URL. The user clicks a button on my site. It goes back to the host. They verify that it's their client. That then does a URI redirect back to me. Job done 30 seconds. That is it. It's a game changer for us as an industry as well, because you think of how complex it is to do Apple connect or get your podcast into other directories. This could be a really simple way for people to claim their podcasts. I mean, i know Fountain should be around this. I know all of the other app providers Podverse, podfriend would love this, but I don't think it's a priority for hosts, unfortunately, and so I'm going to have to use Bribery and Corruption as the only means. Now, moving on a new data website that you wrote about, called podcastdataorg. What is podcastdataorg, james?

James Cridland: 44:03

Well, that is from Benjamin Bellamy. We mentioned it a few weeks ago. It's now got all of the data in there And it basically allows people to query podcast index data and produce some nice graphs from it. So I very, very quickly produced a nice graph showing the average episode length of all podcasts by different languages, and it turns out that Hindi and Chinese shows are really short and shows in Serbian and Bulgarian are, on average, five times longer, so which I thought was quite interesting. But yeah, if you want to have a good play around with some data around podcasting, then podcastdataorg is the place to go.

Sam Sethi: 44:43

Now there's a new website, james, that's going to be launched, called canipodcastcom. Now let me explain. Caniuse is a well-known website for developers to understand HTML features and functions that can be used on various browsers And, i think, on this podcast. Over a number of years I've wondered why don't we have something similar for podcasting where I can look up very quickly hostex feature, i don't know person tag or location tag. Do they support it? Don't they support it? Just a very simple, quick visual. Well, i'm glad to say that Daniel J Lewis and myself are going to put this one together now, when we've just launched the holding page. So if you're interested in it, go over there to canipodcastcom, put in your email and we'll let you know when we've got the grid ready, and that's what we're going to do. Whether you call it the wall of fame or the wall of shame or you just call it a visual grid, i don't really care. I've been calling for this, so eventually, forget about it. We're going to do it ourselves.

James Cridland: 45:46

Well, yeah indeed, And maybe there's something that Pod news can be helping with in terms of some of that as well indeed now.

Sam Sethi: 45:55

Congrats to Rob Brinley. He's become a partner at. He's got a new partnership with Streamy odd, a platform I really like as well. He's doing a lot of video stuff with his 100 TV and, yeah, i mean Streamy odd are pushing forward very strongly with their integrations with YouTube, linkedin, twitter, tiktok and various other reels such as Instagram and Yeah I just thought I'd give him a quick hat tip and Vidcon, which I wouldn't go to, but Vidcon is in Anaheim and it's on now, so all the video Streaming world is over there at the moment.

James Cridland: 46:30

Yes, indeed, now It's time for a drink, because we're going to mention AI drink. Can podcast AI really help me and you save time and energy? This was a good blog post that we linked to a couple of days ago in the pod news newsletter, clare weight Brown. I tested five AI platforms that can write show notes, social media captions and more. Of course, buzz sprouts Can do that with its co-host platform, which we are currently using on this very show, since they're a sponsor. But there were four more Podcast marketing AI, cast magic podium and swell AI. She missed out cap show anyway. She put the audio file onto five platforms and has reviewed them in a table, and which one did Clare like best Sam.

Sam Sethi: 47:18

Annoyingly, a little bit of each is what she came up with as her conclusion, and she said none of them are completely perfect for me. But again, if you want to see her review and it is a very detailed review She's got a dropbox grid Or a file that gets downloaded from dropbox and it goes through in detail all the features and functions of each of those AI platforms.

James Cridland: 47:38

Yes, which is a fantastic thing. Let's look at some events and stuff coming up. A podcast movement in Denver is the next big thing, of course. August the 21st to the 24th. They announced 50 new sessions yesterday for podcast movement 2023. I'm going. I'm moderating a panel. I could moderate more if you fancy any. You know white, middle-aged men Moderating a panel. If you don't, if you don't have enough of those, then that would be a fine and dandy thing, but I will certainly see you there in September.

James Cridland: 48:14

Podcast day Asia has been announced in Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia, on September the 6th. I'll be there as well. You will be able to see people like pod beans, norma Jean Belenke, pod news writer Guan Jin-Yoh. I'm sure he's delighted at being called pod news writer. He runs a podcast network in Singapore. It does a very good job of that. I'll also be speaking there as well.

James Cridland: 48:37

It's going to be a whole day focused on podcasting. It's part of radio days Asia, which is a larger conference in some fancy hotel in the middle of KL. So, looking forward to that, there's the London podcast festival, september the 7th to the 17th In King's Place. If you want to go and see live shows getting recorded, the Arkansas podcast festival is happening at the beginning of September in Arkansas, in Little Rock, and it's starting with a podcast pitch contest. But the exciting ones to talk about are pod news live in London on the 27th of September, podnewsnet slash live to get your tickets for that, lots of great speakers including Ross Adams from ACAST and many other people, and the British podcast award for the podcast On the next day, september the 28th. Those are happening in London, in the UK as well, and it'd be fantastic for you to come along for those. And there's more events, both paid for and free, at podnews virtual events or events in a place with people. And if you're organizing something, tell the world about it. It's free to be listed at podnewsnet slash events.

Jingle: 49:50

Podnewsnet slash events Boostergram corner corner corner on the podnews weekly review.

James Cridland: 49:59

Yes, it's our favorite time of the week Large amounts of money sent through Boostergrams It's not mentioned small amounts of money anymore, lest I get the rough of Adam Curry. Lots of nice and exciting boosts. So thank you for those. What have we got here, sam Well?

Sam Sethi: 50:16

I don't know who Martin is, but he says hooray for James and sent us 10,000 sat. So I don't know if that's your brother, i don't know if that's your brother-in-law, i don't know who that is.

James Cridland: 50:25

But hooray for.

Sam Sethi: 50:26

James, that's all I'll say hooray for James.

James Cridland: 50:28

I know Martin Moritzson perhaps Oh that would make sense.

James Cridland: 50:31

Yes, Yes, that would make sense, wouldn't it? Thank you very much, martin, for that. Nathan Gathright says I was asking where he wrote me some wonderful code A while ago which I have forgotten about, and I had no idea how to get hold of it. Anyway, he sent us a row of ducks and said you'll find the code you're looking for here on his GitHub, which is very nice. So it's a Python script to manipulate the output of whispercpp into the podcast name space, jason Spec, so hurrah. So, who knows, i might do a little bit of work on that.

James Cridland: 51:08

May I just say, though, that Apple have been fiddling around with Keynote, and Keynote no longer exports files that are named correctly, which is very, very, very annoying. So they look as if they're named correctly in the Finder, but when you have a look on a terminal window then it's got question marks in the file name and it's broken all of my scripts, and I'm quite irritated by it. So, in case you're wondering why at the moment there are no images on the press releases that are covered in the pod newsletter, the reason why is that Apple broke something, so it just works. Anyway, very annoying, dave Jones, 21,112 sats that's a big rush boost.

James Cridland: 52:00

Why do people focus on the micro of micro payments? when somebody sends in five dollars in a boost, it's denigrated a small. Here we go again. But when somebody subscribes for five dollars on Patreon, that's somehow different. Why do people focus on the micro of micro payments? this is because I mentioned this time last week, sam to Sky, that a booster ground was a small amount of money. I was desperately trying to avoid the phrase tip right and desperately trying to avoid that, and so I said I said small amount of money. And yeah, why do I mean? I find it, i find it strange on the other side, that the podcasting 2.0 podcast basically whisks through oh, $50 from so and so $5 from so and so $5 from so and so, and then spends an awful lot of time reading out somebody's row of row of ducks boostergram. I find that just as perplexing, but still I just leave it to mine, the wrong.

Sam Sethi: 53:07

No, no, i just leave it. I mean, at the end of the day, i think we are all trying to make people understand what sats are, and I guess we could just call it sats instead of micro payments and then just move on.

James Cridland: 53:19

I think, yeah, whatever yeah, i mean, if we call it sats, then nobody will understand what we're talking about. So if that's the preferred plan no, i have no idea then I would humbly suggest that's the wrong plan. Golly, i'm grumpy this week, aren't I not? not totally, it seems. It seems.

Sam Sethi: 53:36

I missed a hell of a show last week. I know I heard it, but I can't remember much about it. From this for James saying all or six a handful of times. What a mouthful. I tried to give you 69 sats, says the old podcast Justin, but it wouldn't allow me, so he sent us 699 sats. Now I clearly have no idea. I'm going to have to go back and listen to last week's show with Sky because I can't remember you doing this yes, i'm not sure I could remember me doing that as well, but I must have done it.

James Cridland: 54:07

Thank you, the optimal living daily podcast, justin. Yes, yes, thank you for that. I can't remember. Oh, yes, no, there was a. There was a. There was something about oral sex, wasn't there? I'm trying to remember. Yes, yes, there was something about I. As for yes, who knows? anyway, moving on quickly, dave Jones, ai and data dust. Exclamation mark 10 000 sats, any idea?

Sam Sethi: 54:34

no, i guess we were talking about various AI things, and I think he's just calling it pointless. I think he doesn't really think the AI thing is very useful.

James Cridland: 54:44

Yes, anyway yes, quite possibly. Anyway, thank you very much for that small amount of money, dave, and I'm Kevin Finn from, and Kevin Finn from Buzzsprout 50 000 sats, that's more like it. Thank you, kevin. Congratulations on pod news live. Well, thank you, yes, it was a great event. We thoroughly enjoyed it. One of our mistakes was not to have recorded any of it.

James Cridland: 55:08

Don't, just so we'll put my hand up for that one we'll have learned for next time, but no, it was a really good event. The next pod news live, of course, happening at the end of September in London still haven't booked mayor playing tickets. Should probably do that. Pod newsnet slash live is the place to go and buy those tickets, and if you get value from what we do the pod news weekly review is separate from pod news, as in fact, pod news live is, sam, and I share everything from it.

James Cridland: 55:36

We really appreciate your support as well, so we can continue making this. You can become a power supporter at weeklypodnewsnet, as indeed Kevin has as well, or you can support us with sats by hitting your boost button, and that's also a lovely thing, so you can go and do that too with a brand new podcast app. Podnewsnet slash new podcast apps will help you find a new app. Oh, we should probably say thank you to those people who are power supporters through weeklypodnewsnet, which includes Dave Jones three dollars, that's a lot of money, dave. Thank you very much. Also Matt Medeiros, marshall Brown, cameron Moll and Nick Ivanov as well those are just some of them and Kevin Finn, who are all giving us an amount of money every single month. So thank you so much for that. You can join them as well. Weeklypodnewsnet Sam. What's happening for you this week?

Sam Sethi: 56:44

I'm battling with this tag called the value time split. Yes, it is very, very challenging, but I've got my head around it. They didn't make it as easy as I thought they could have made it, but hey, it works. Except Stephen B, who has got sovereign feeds, has a secret a web socket. So if you want to do value time splits to the live lit shows, good luck. I haven't found out a way to do that yet, but we've got value time split working now in the recorded shows, so that's the main thing.

Sam Sethi: 57:20

And, of course, as you heard early I haven't seen it well for the, for the three people that are going to use it, it's going to be fantastic, but for the other thing is yeah, as I said earlier, i'm trying to convince Hoast to implement, and the reason why I'm not calling it podcast authorised James, because we Brits spell it with an S and the Americans spell it with a Z. No way should that be used, right.

James Cridland: 57:46

You rightly point that out. So, yes, i think that that makes a bunch of sense. And yes, i mean I tried listening to the podcasting 2.0 show live last week while I was in a bus on the way to the airport in Toronto And I very much enjoyed that. Although the device that I was trying to listen to I could listen to exactly five minutes before the memory filled up and the whole thing froze And I had to start all over again. And on the third time of doing that I got a little bit grumpy and I sent a message to the authors of that particular app and I said can't you make a better app that doesn't crash? So still so, maybe they might be doing that. Have you listened to any good podcasts over the last couple of weeks?

Sam Sethi: 58:38

Yeah, i actually two really good ones. I would highly recommend people take some time. Today, kieran from the mere mortals friend of the show, has put out a great podcast called podcasting 2.0 and value for value, delivering on the promise of Bitcoin. He's done it as a YouTube and also as a podcast. I watched it on YouTube because I sat down with my laptop and he's done a full history of from the beginning of podcasting all the way through to what the current trends are. Well done, kieran, really great job on that one. And Daniel J Lewis has done an interview with Deidre Tishen, the CEO and founder of Capshow, talking about everything you need to know about podcasting 2.0. And for many people who are, you know, early adopters and geeks, probably not going to learn anything, but it's a great introductory explanation for the next set of people who need to understand about podcasting 2.0 and value for value. So another good job worth listening to. Very good. Now, james, what's happened for you, apart from sitting in bus stops, getting angry and being a little bit grumpy? What?

James Cridland: 59:41

else. Well, yes, i quite often I will do a trip report if I'm flying. It keeps me sane, and you can read the latest ones of those on my personal website, which is JamesCridlandnet. If you want to go and have a peek at that JamesCridlandnet, you'll find the all of the excitement about traveling over to Canada and then over to the UK and then back to Canada and then back home again.

James Cridland: 1:00:14

As a result, i sort of powered through, trying to ignore any jet lag, but I have to tell you that last night I was in bed at seven o'clock and I slept all the way through till seven o'clock this morning. So possibly that was a bit of a mistake, but I did. When I landed on Sunday morning at about seven o'clock, got here to the house at about eight o'clock to find out that someone, mentioning no names, had managed to block the kitchen sink so successfully that I was unable to unblock it with any of the equipment that I had, i went to the local DIY store, got some equipment to unblock it that failed, had to call out the emergency plumber. Even they couldn't even manage to unblock it in the first hour And, yes, so ended up spending $2,300 out blocking. Yes, now that's Australian dollars, so that's about £1.20.

James Cridland: 1:01:18

But nevertheless that was an awful lot of money. That's a big baller. Yes, that's definitely a big baller, which reminds me I need to do something about that as well.

James Cridland: 1:01:30

But, yes, so that was all fun. So I've very much been enjoying that. I've been putting some finishing touches to a super secret thing that we're launching for pod news in September at pod news live, which we'll be able to share a little bit more detail about then And all of next week. I've got a. I've got a coding week where I can actually sit and the rest of the family are away So I can actually sit and do some proper coding And I'm going to be doing all kinds of entertaining, drifting of stuff and making it all work an awful lot better hopefully. So that's going to be fun, but that's it for this week.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:15

You can ask James and I questions using email to weekly at podnewsnet or send us a booster grab for feedback. If your podcast app doesn't support boosting, grab a new app from podnewsnet forward slash new podcast apps.

James Cridland: 1:02:29

Yes, our music is from Studio Dragonfly, our voiceover is Sheila Dee and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy get updated every day.

Jingle: 1:02:40

Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet tell your friends and grow the show and support us and support us. The podnews weekly review will return next week. Keep listening.