James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 7th of July 2023.

Jingle: 0:04

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

James Cridland: 0:14

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Podn ews, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of PodFans In the chapters. Today, android still highly fragmented for podcast apps. Podcasters are getting more comfortable with AI tools. The core audience for podcasts are men, age 25 to 34. And rsscom adds more support for the podcast 2.0 namespace. And also

John W Gibbons: 0:40

I am the CEO and Chief Product Officer of Libsyn, and I'll be on later to talk a little bit about the history of Libsyn and then also where we're going in the future.

James Cridland: 0:48

He will. This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzzsprout. Last week, 3,115 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout, Posting made easy with powerful tools and remarkable customer support. And now AI to help you publish your show. And by Pod News Live in London this September. tickets at podnewsnet slash live. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly.

Sam Sethi: 1:13

Review. So, James, let's kick it off this week. Android it looks like it's a little bit fragmented Now. Last week we spoke about the closure of Stitcher, which was a very popular Android app, And now this week we've got a report out that Android's highly fragmented. Tell me more about this highly fragmented platform you love using.

James Cridland: 1:33

Yeah, so this is data from OP3. So it comes with a few sort of warnings in terms of it's just data from OP3. And OP3 isn't necessarily representative of everything, but what is very clear is that Apple Podcasts it's basically dominated by three different apps. The top three apps Apple Podcasts, spotify and then Apple Core Media. So you look at those three and those are responsible for more than 75% of all of the downloads. If you have a look at Android, it's a very, very different story. Lots of very different apps in there. What you can see from this data is that iOS, everything is basically Apple Podcasts or Spotify, but the jury is still out in terms of Android. Yes, spotify is very popular, but there's all kinds of other apps in there as well, so we're still really looking for a big number two Android app, which I just thought was interesting, it's your friends, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 2:34

It's the bet. They've got to do it, haven't they?

James Cridland: 2:37

I keep on banging on about Apple getting an Android app because kind of they have to, although I can see that if they were trying to sell Apple Podcast subscriptions which would be the business reason why they would code an Android app then clearly they've got a problem there, because Google would want 30% of the money, i suppose. So maybe they'd have to build out the website first so that they can push people to the website in order for them to. I don't know, it's all a bit of a mess, but clearly Apple is missing out by not having an Android app. But they're not stupid. I'm sure they'll be working on something. But yeah, what more can you say about that? I guess?

Sam Sethi: 3:19

It's the reason for the fragmentation, though, because you can sideload apps onto Android phones and you can't do that through iOS. Is that anything to do with it? maybe?

James Cridland: 3:28

I mean, you can sideload apps onto Android, but very, very few people do Most of the time. Yes, you can download an APK if you really want to, but virtually everybody just uses the Google Play Store. So I don't necessarily think that that's the issue. I think that it's just more just a case of There isn't a clear leader, apart from Spotify, which has 42% of all downloads on the Android platform in May. Apart from that, there's really no clear leader. Podcast addict at number two with just 10%. Cast Box at number three with 10%. Stitcher, by the way, at number 10 with 2.5%. That traffic will have to go somewhere else, and Pocket Casts, which is a very big app, doesn't actually tell you whether or not somebody is listening on Android or on iOS. So, who knows, maybe Pocket Casts is the number two, but we don't know that from the data that they actually have.

Sam Sethi: 4:27

Now you've got an Android Watch, haven't you? And I think you've tested the brand new Pocket Casts app that's on there where OS?

James Cridland: 4:35

Yes, it's pretty cool. It's only for Pocket Cast Plus subscribers, so you need to be paying for Pocket Casts in order to use it or be in the grandfathered deal, as I am. But yeah, it works absolutely flawlessly. Full playback, you get the speed control, you get the silent skipping, you get the volume boost, all of that kind of stuff. It syncs kind of with your watch in terms of where it's got up to in a particular podcast, kind of. It's not brilliant at that, but it does a relatively okay job at doing that And yeah, so for my daily walk with the dog to the coffee shop, it seems to work quite nicely.

Sam Sethi: 5:15

Can it order you coffee yet?

James Cridland: 5:16

Sadly it can't order my coffee, but the watch can also pay for the coffee, so I suppose, on that regard, I don't need to bring my phone anymore. Although, what would I read?

Sam Sethi: 5:25

Oh, there you go Now moving on. Ai Cast No A Cast. See what you did there. Yeah, thanks, took hours without thinking. It's got a new study out they have one every week, it feels like but this one is that podcast listeners are comfortable with AI tools being used in podcasting. It says that AI is most welcome by listeners, including sound enhancements, translated captions, ai generated transcripts. The study claims that 79% of podcast listeners want transcripts for searching and 78% want closed. So is it just a case of it's what I've said? AI should stand for assisted intelligence, and it makes sense about having tools that help us.

James Cridland: 6:07

Yes, i've seen a lot of people using assisted intelligence or augmented intelligence or additive intelligence, and I think that that's absolutely fair. One of the things that I am curious about is, if 79% of podcast listeners four out of five want transcripts to help them search, much the same number want closed captions as well, why A Cast isn't actually supporting that. You can't find any transcripts on any A Cast show website. You can't find any transcripts within the RSS feeds either, even though they actually produce those for its conversational targeting service. So they're making the transcripts, they're just not publishing them anywhere, which seems kind of a bit of a missed opportunity. you would have thought.

Sam Sethi: 6:54

Yes, we did talk to them about their support for the podcast index namespace and they seem keen to do it, but they haven't, as you say, gone full hog in. I also noticed because I was looking at one of their RSS feeds, they've got their own namespace now. This might not be new, by the way, but I just happened to have noticed it myself and they've got a host of tags that they've added into shows that they have show ID, signature, network, imported feed. I looked at some of their proprietary tags and one that I think would be really great for them to submit is maybe A Cast Network and maybe rename that podcast network, because it'll be really useful to know what network the podcast was in or from Producer pages could be produced from that. Anyway, let's hope that A Cast actually do become more active in the open ecosystem, and if you want to listen to the interview that we did with Chris Kwame-Rodin, it's episode 24, so you can always go back and listen to what A Cast had to say about the open ecosystem.

James Cridland: 7:58

Other things going on in terms of AI as well. Laszlo Montgomery has done a very clever thing. He's taken the China History podcast that he's put together and he's made the transcripts of those podcasts and then rewritten them slightly to produce a book. It's called The History of Chinese Philosophy and you'll find it on the Amazon website now, which I just thought was a very clever idea to get the most out of your podcast. So that was quite neat.

James Cridland: 8:27

There's a service called Podcast Grader, which analyses the audio quality of your show and uses AI to give more precise recommendations. It says that Pod News Daily is perfect. It doesn't like this show because it says there's too much stuff which is too loud and too much stuff which is too soft, which one of us is that I think they've got it wrong because we use Buzzsprout's magic mastering. How could that possibly be the case?

James Cridland: 8:50

And there's a voiceover called Greg Marston, who I used to use 20 years ago when I was writing radio commercials. He is the voice of LBC 97.3 from the LBC studios in Leicester Square and the voice of TalkBack 702 in Jo Berg. This is Talk Radio 702 in various other places. He ended up finding out that in 2005 he signed a deal with a satnav company to basically record a satnav for them. That deal has ended up being resold by that company to a company called Revoicer, which is an AI powered text to speech service. So now, basically, he, as a professional voiceover, is now in competition with his own voice. It's just like the most ridiculous thing. So you know how ridiculous is that. I have to say there was an episode when I was reporting the AI story from ACAST earlier on in the week, the pod news daily was half voiced by an AI voice and it didn't actually sound too bad.

John W Gibbons: 10:02

Podcast listeners are comfortable with AI tools being used in podcasting. Says a new study from ACAST.

Sam Sethi: 10:08

You're going to be replaced, james, be careful.

James Cridland: 10:12

I can't do that every day for the rest of my life.

Sam Sethi: 10:16

And then there's another new podcast that could strip out the ads from podcasts and share the money with creators. Audio is using AI to remove ads from the AM and FM stations and could offer the same for podcasters too. Is that ethical?

James Cridland: 10:31

I mean it's ethical if you've got the podcasters agreement to end up doing that. They send out all kinds of entertaining press releases every two weeks. It seems to be one of these companies who is valued on the amount of press releases that they can send out and the amount of jargon in there. I mean it won't be jargon to you. You'll be familiar with DeNovo. Mau growth data promises to reduce current burn and to non-binding LOIs with a buy side MNA strategy. You'll be familiar with all of that.

Sam Sethi: 11:04

But to me it makes no sense. I did take a degree in business bullshit, So yeah, that's fine with me. I've got one of those and NBA more bullshit than anyone else. That's what they stand for.

James Cridland: 11:15

Yeah, crikey, but I think it's one of those companies where they're sending out press releases like that and you go oh well, they must know what they're talking about, i must buy some shares.

Sam Sethi: 11:31

But yes, unlike the company that our guest looks after, Yes, So we talked about John W Gibbons being appointed as the interim CEO for podcast hosting and monetization company Libsyn. He's been with the company since January 2022 and he was previously CEO of Pocketcasts, And we thought it'd be really good to reach out to John and find out what's going on with Libsyn. I started off by asking John what is the plan for Libsyn?

John W Gibbons: 11:58

So yeah, as you said, i've been here since January 2022. I was hired as the chief product officer and then also served in the role of president. My background that kind of led me here is I've worked in technology for 25 years now. Most recently, previous to being at Libsyn, i was the CEO of Pocketcasts, which is a revered podcast app. It's my podcast app of choice and was owned by a consortium of leaders in this space, including NPR and BBC and WNYC, and I also was the first advisor to PodChaser and a big fan of those guys and what they're doing there as well. So the space is one that I'm very familiar with and one that I'm very passionate about and is very much a part of who I am as a person, as well as what I do for a living.

John W Gibbons: 12:42

And I guess, to answer your question in terms of where Libsyn was and where we're going is you're well aware, but I assume most of your listeners are. Libsyn is a pioneer in the podcasting space Because among the first podcast hosts, starting in the early 2000s and has grown since then and has an enormous amount of goodwill and hosts tens of thousands of shows among the largest in the industry, and so traditionally it has been a I think what you can say is a vertical podcast host, and we could talk a little bit more about this detail, but where we're moving is we're moving towards becoming a horizontal services company. So not only will we host your podcast, but we also will help you record, we will help you monetize and we will help you become more professional, and we can go into a little bit more detail about that as we discuss, but that's kind of where we came from and where we're going.

Sam Sethi: 13:33

So when you left a pocketcast, what was the enticement? As you said, pocketcasts great. It's under the WordPress banner. I know Matt from 20 odd years now, Matt Molymburg. So what was the hello, John, come on over to Libsyn. What was the enticement then?

John W Gibbons: 13:49

Yeah, i mean, i think, the enticement for me. So if pocketcasts was an independent company, they sold to this consortium again that was made up of BBC, npr, wnyc, wbz and this American Life. So you can imagine sort of the complexity of that ownership. Sure, it's a lot of wonderful people in a single room. So that was a wonderful experience that I had. It was decided that configuration of ownership. It was working well for everyone, but not fantastically for the entire group. So, as you mentioned, it was sold to Automatic, which is the company that most people know is WordPress. And so when the opportunity to join Libsyn came up, i had a lot of discussions with them, the entire. As you may recall and it's been well reported in pod news there were a lot of complexities financially with Libsyn, and so, to be totally frank, i initially started meeting with them because I was just really curious. I thought I don't know what Libsyn is and I'm really curious what's going on with this company? I was just being a little bit of a gossip girl, frankly, to sort of say, hey, what's going on with this company? And so that was the initial reason. But also, as I mentioned, i have been doing technology since the late 90s.

John W Gibbons: 14:59

My background is largely on a product person And I think for maybe lack of a better description or something it may sound terribly generic I mean I am a champion of integration, customer excellence and experience. This is who I am as a person, and I happen to get to do it for a living as well, and I've always listened to podcasts as I've been building things, and it's always been around creatives. I've always been in service of creators in some fashion, and that has been to help them build products, to be discovered and to make their content and then to also monetize. And then it's also been in service of advertisers, who I view as a very strong customer of mine as well, to be able to match them to the content that matches what they're doing. And so when the opportunity came with the Libsyn, i thought, wow, this is a really fantastic opportunity to learn a little bit more about what's going on, but also possibly take a legacy pioneer in the space and be a part of its transformation into the future.

John W Gibbons: 15:54

I have a lot of experience in doing that as well, taking legacy industries and pulling them into the modern age, and so that was really the most enticing thing for me is like here's this fantastic brand with magnificent goodwill, with tens of thousands of shows in an industry that I love and one that is clearly growing, and it's sort of it's generic to say that it's been a, you know, a watershed moment. I feel like we just hear that statement all the time, but it genuinely has. Like it's been at like this watershed moment for a long time. But the number of new people who are listening and the sheer number of podcasts that are coming into this space And then, most importantly, the sheer amount of investment that's going into the space, like you just can't ignore that we are at this watershed moment, right, like it's taken us 20 years to become a billion dollar industry.

John W Gibbons: 16:38

It's taken us a year to become a two billion dollar industry. So, like you know, i don't need to be a maskiness to think like, okay, well, like it's finally happening. So long answer to the short question, but that was the part that really, like, made my tummy tingle at the opportunity to join Libsyn.

Sam Sethi: 16:52

Now, before you came on board, we've interviewed LC Escobar before about Libsyn five, which came out, i think, last year, which was a platform change. Is that the platform that's given you the ability, as you said, to go from being a vertical player to a horizontal player? Is that the bedrock on which you're building And what are the things that you've started to add? then I know you've got glow and you've got advertised cast, so maybe take us through some of the functions that you're building on top of this platform.

John W Gibbons: 17:20

Yeah, absolutely, i'll try to be as charming as LC is. That's a tough act to follow. As you're aware, as your listeners are, she's the head of our community development. She's fantastic, and so, to answer your question, yes, so what the sort of legacy podcast industry is familiar with is our publishing services at Libsyn, which we call Libsyn, for It's the fourth version of Libsyn, but it's a legacy product that was developed many years ago And, while it has all of the functionality to make a podcast successful, it lacks a modern aesthetic, it lacks a modern UI and UAC And it also lacks a lot of the plugins that really will deliver that services model, that horizontal services model that I mentioned. So Libsyn 5 is the next iteration of that. When new customers join, they would join Libsyn 5 and that has all of the same functionality. That makes Libsyn 4 the revered publishing tool set that it is, but it also has all this optionality to both serve professional, enterprise level podcasters. But it also is built to serve the next million podcasters that we know are coming and wanting to be easy. Right, most podcasters are fantastic at the topic that they know, but they don't need to be recording engineers, right? That prevents a lot of wonderful voices from being able to join the conversation and we really want to eliminate those barriers. So the answer to the question about sort of the services that we are focused on there, of course, as I mentioned, it's modern hosting tools. So again, it's for advanced podcasters And, of course, we are very focused on the next million podcasters.

John W Gibbons: 19:03

We also are very focused on monetization. To be a podcaster, you don't have to be focused on making money. We want people who are focused on sharing their passion with the world and making that an easy process. However, it does cost a little bit of money to make a podcast right. If you can make money doing it, that's a good thing, and it also shouldn't be a science project trying to figure that out. It should be a button that you push.

John W Gibbons: 19:26

So the first form of monetization for us is monetization via advertising. We have two ways that we do that. There is integrated programmatic ad tech that we have. That effectively is as you're aware your listeners probably are. There's the ability to be able to dynamically insert ads via a variety of leading VSPs And that allows us to deliver very quality CPMs and also very high fill rates, and there's a relationship between those two things that will probably bore everyone who's listening to go into great detail about that, but those are two very important things that we're very focused on. And then the second one is host read ads. As you're aware you're listening to, probably are We also own a company called advertisecastcom, which is the leading marketplace for podcasts. Who are looking to deliver advertising and then advertising. We're looking to be matched with the right podcast. So we're also looking at doing integration of host read marketplace and then, of course, doubling down on the advertisecastcom marketplace, which is agbostic. So the integration is for people who are lips and customers, and the advertisecastcom platform is for anyone they can host anywhere.

John W Gibbons: 20:35

The second form of monetization is monetization via subscriptions tech. So this is integrated subscription services. So in many cases, if you don't have millions or hundreds of thousands of downloads and you have a smaller audience, but they're very passionate about what you do they're willing to pay you for a subscription service to be able to get exclusive content or to be able to access things earlier, whatever it may be, and we're very focused on being able to provide that service to our listeners as well. And again, the idea is you should be able to click a button and be able to access these things. You don't need to be a technical whiz to know how to do this.

John W Gibbons: 21:10

The third is that we have integrated a recording service, is a tool that we call studio. It's for new podcasters and then those who are just wanting simplicity Those are, you know. They're easy tools to be able to build your podcast. So I think I want to be able to record, i want to be able to develop building blocks that want to be able to auto level, i want to be able to access music and then I want to be able to publish this easily. So that's a tool that is available to all of our customers and anything that they record using studio does not count towards their storage. So we really want to be able to provide that, that easy recording tool for people.

John W Gibbons: 21:46

And then there's a couple others. We have a tool called connect, which is a browser based high quality remote collaboration recording tool. It has integrated multi track recording, which allows for sort of easier editing as a continuous sync, very high quality. It has built in chat and that is available to any of our customers who are on the $20 plus plan. So the idea that someone's paying for another service elsewhere when they already have access to. It is something that we really want to be able to help people save money with.

John W Gibbons: 22:16

And then the last thing I would say in terms of things that we plug into Litsim five we also own a company called pair P-A-I-R dot com, which is a web hosting company, and we are also building in tools for people to be able to easily access domains and easily access professional websites, and we're using data and personalization to be able to help people along their professional journey. And so again, very long statement for short question, sorry, but the idea is that we have been a personal hosting company for 20 something years And we believe that the market has moved on and we really want to support that market by providing all these services that are easy for people to access and easy for them to understand, so that we can get more voices into the podcast ecosystem rather than fewer because of barriers to be able to do all these things that seemingly can come off as very complex.

Sam Sethi: 23:09

No, it's really cool. I call it the five P's of podcasting pre-production, production, post-production, privatization and PR. And those five allow you to really look at all the elements. So you know, for you it's like helping people get ready to actually build their podcasts, record their podcast And then you can get ready to go ahead now with connect, you know, post-production with your tools, monetization with your dynamic ad insertions and advertised cast, and then the promotion of the website and the whole thing. So it's really cool that you've now covered the full gambit. You've also taken on a new CTO, or you've promoted a new CTO in the company as well, and one of the questions that everyone would want me to ask is you've gone from what we call legacy to now a modern day platform. When are you going to officially support the podcast index namespace 2.0?

John W Gibbons: 24:02

Yep. No, it's a really good question And we've had conversations with them and it's a totally valid question. We, as strong advocates of independent podcasting and also of the open ecosystem, the podcast 2.0 space, is something that we do absolutely support and want to be advocates for, not just in word but also in action. With that said, i would say or I would share, rather that we are a 20 year old company that is relentlessly marching towards modernization for our customers, and part of our service to those customers is making sure that our technology is modern and that we are doing a way to check. that's potentially a boring part of the conversation here, but tech debt is a real thing and you can imagine anybody who works in technology. The tech debt that we are harboring here at our company is enough that it's an area that we have to focus on. So, not to dodge your question by any means whatsoever, but I think it's sort of one of those things that, in order for us to be able to love on other people, we got to love ourselves first, and we're still in the phase where, like, we've got to love on ourselves by getting our own house in order.

John W Gibbons: 25:17

But I wouldn't say and I'm happy to say this publicly that we absolutely support the podcast 2.0 initiative. We have verbally committed to that to those groups And, again, it's just in the DNA of who we are as a company. We are strong advocates for the open ecosystem, and that's not just because it plays into our business model, which it absolutely does But we believe that it isn't the best interest for the industry And I think there's a lot of signals to show that's not just my opinion, that's fact, and I think the last couple of years for those players who have chosen the walled garden approach, that it doesn't work. And so the podcast 2.0 initiative is absolutely one we support. We just have not gotten to it yet, and that's not just us being selfish. It is us being selfish, actually, but it's us being selfish in the name of better serving our customers, and we will absolutely get there.

Sam Sethi: 26:08

Look, it's great that you are having that on your horizon. Looking at the feed, which is the Libsyn podcast from LC and Rob, you've already added the podcast namespace into the RSS. You've got support for the soundbite and the locks tag. That may have been manually added rather than programmatically added through a UI, but it's narrow of direction, right, so could I press you on a time frame for that? Are you talking six months a year?

John W Gibbons: 26:38

Yeah, so this is moves for us And I think we don't have to get into the great detail of the state of the economy, but I'm sure we'll talk about that at some point. The evolution of our company has happened, from being a public company And I'm sure we'll talk about this to de-listing, why we de-listed and what we're doing, and we can be happy to talk about any of that stuff. Our priority is to make sure that we are effectively shepherding a financially responsible company here, and that's not just to be capitalistic pigs. It is in service of our customers. The more that we can shepherd a financially responsible company, the better that we can serve our customers and the better that we can serve the next million podcasters who are coming. So, to answer your question about the timeline, we had initially talked about this happening in 2023.

John W Gibbons: 27:27

The state of the economy in 2023 has changed dramatically And we also have been on a bit of an M&A's free, of which we're very proud, and that we have really focused there to make sure that we are connecting everything the way that it should and are sort of get our house in order phase. So the podcast 2.0 initiative did get pushed back. This is not as specific, maybe as I would like it to be, but I do spend a lot of time, also serve as the chief product officer here, and so it has been pushed into 2024. And that is largely because of the acquisition that we've made this year, the requirement to dance properly with the economy and also make sure that we're plugging in M&A activity that we've done. So my hope currently we can talk again in the beginning of next year and you can hold me to this, and if I have to dance around it, you can say John, sounds like you're dancing around it, but our plan is H1 of next year for that.

Sam Sethi: 28:25

Okay, that's cool. Now I will be back to speak with you in about time. Fred, now look, you touched on it and we said we would talk about it. Libcim obviously was on the stock market, was delisted. That was probably before you were on board, but now you are in the hot seat. This is your baby. What is the plan to get back on the market then?

John W Gibbons: 28:43

Yeah, so when I joined, we were a public company and the executive team took over of which you know, including myself there. We made the decision to de-risk the company in order to correct financial adjustments that had built up over the year. And I'll say this that we, like any responsible company, our product and business execution plans will prepare us for any outcome. Right Like we could go public, we could stay private, we could merge as another company, we could sell like we're setting up the company for success, and then we would have optionality when we get there. We, as a result of all the work that we have done in Stee Listing in 2022, we completed our 2022 financial audit in May of this year.

John W Gibbons: 29:27

Pod News reported on that and many work can find that at investorwipsoncom, and I'll say that the interesting thing, i don't count myself as a finance person. I am a product person but, as a result of my roles, i'm obviously around finance a lot. But finance is one of these things that it's kind of like being pregnant. You can't be a little bit pregnant, right Like it's just yari art And so being out of compliance financially. It could be a billion dollars or it could be $200.

John W Gibbons: 29:52

And the financial adjustments that have been built up over the years, rather were simply things that were like VAT taxes that hadn't been collected properly. It wasn't the gossip that I was like kind of hoping for. Like when I took it on, i was like there's gonna be some good juicy gossip here, and like there wasn't. Unfortunately It wasn't the juice that I was kind of like hoping for. So, either way, to answer your question again as I digress, is that our plan right now is to continue to get ourselves in order. We've demonstrated that through the audits that we've released. We are seeing fantastic growth, that we've seen 39% growth from 2021. So we are near a $60 million company. We are doing fantastically as a company and we're gonna continue to invest in making sure that we get our house in order. So we don't have an immediate plan for what we're doing, but we are preparing to make ourselves beautiful and, whichever direction we decide to go, we feel like we'll be prepared for that.

Sam Sethi: 30:48

As an executive team. That's wonderful because it's the second silver lining. You can have your compensation packages aligned to it and boom, if you go back into the market, we get acquired And in the, as you said, the economic downturn. What a better time to sort the house out in preparation for the uptime.

John W Gibbons: 31:04

So that's exactly right. That's exactly right, and I think also, as we were looking at the areas to focus on, there's like a lot of nothing to see here, frankly, but it's just easier. There's so much compliance stuff that's really important, but our intention is to uplist onto a market that has a broader investor base and where we are in the company of the industry in which we participate, and so to de-list and to do all that work and then release our audits on our timeframe without having the distraction of compliance requirements. Of course, our audits are compliance. It was just an easier process, but, yes, to be able to use this time to get our house in order and then decide what we're gonna do has been a wonderful choice that I'm really proud of us for doing, and also our shareholders. We have thousands of shareholders, and our board has been very happy with it. We've, then, have received a lot of support in that process.

Sam Sethi: 31:59

Now, one of the things that the industry has been talking about is YouTube, the advent of video. Daniel X been talking about 100,000 video elements on Spotify, and it's been this whole. is YouTube a podcast, not a podcast conversation? but putting that aside for a minute, Where does Libsyn sit in the pantheon of what video we'll do? Are you gonna be supporting it as a platform or are you just gonna leave that to others?

John W Gibbons: 32:27

No, so we do support it right now. In January of this year, we announced a partnership with YouTube in order to deliver real-time metrics for our podcasters in order to better support their monetization efforts. So we absolutely support it as an open ecosystem advocate And, dare I say, like the advocate right, like we are the company that did this. And that's the other reason why you asked me earlier why I joined is that I was like man, like I salute that flag all day long. It's gonna be able to be a part of a team, because to drive that forward is, frankly, a real pleasure, a real honor, and so, yes, we absolutely support it. We support creators being able to share their voice And we believe that the widest distribution to do that is how success is made, and that's not just us being like generous people, it's also we make money from that And we want our creators to make a lot of money and we want them to be able to find wide distribution. So, yes, we absolutely do support video and are excited for the growth that are seen there.

John W Gibbons: 33:24

I happen to be like an audio podcast person. I have the conversation with people all the time and they say well, what do you think about video podcasts And this is just me and like hopefully someone can correct me on this, but I just don't find video to be podcasts. I think those are videos Like. That to me is like that's a video. You know what I mean? It's chicken. You're like no, it's not chicken, it's a steak. You're like well, they're both meat, but it's a steak, it's not a chicken. It's like. That's just me. I know that people are gonna be rolling their eyes and think like that's so podcast. We support people being able to share their voice wherever it goes, but for me personally, i'm an audio person, so that's just my two cents in the ring of this video podcast And I think you just said it to video, not a podcast. That's just me.

Sam Sethi: 34:03

No, we're in agreement. Look, the other hot topic that everyone talks about is AI. I mean, again, have that to your stack and suddenly, strangely, vcs go oh, that's increased your value by a bazillion dollars. I mean, i've just seen more emails and press releases with you know the thing we were doing two years ago? well, that's actually AI. You didn't call it AI two years ago, right? And now I'm seeing all these companies telling me that they've got an AI solution. So let's just clear the deck. Where is AI and Libsyn, if anywhere?

John W Gibbons: 34:32

Yeah. So for me, just being like a pretentious technology person, i agree I think people misuse the title the same way that they misuse machine learning. That was the previous term to Jure, but like that right. So I think we are the camp, like everyone else, that we are trying to understand where AI is I don't want to use the word disrupt but where it is going to enhance the podcast industry. Like there's very clear ones, like you know, that AI. They're now like AI driven news podcasts I think I heard that on pod news this week actually And so we're really trying to figure out where can AI support what we are doing for our customers?

John W Gibbons: 35:12

I think some areas that are sort of most obvious for this are on our marketplaces for advertisers and podcasters, like how do we better connect them? I think that's a really important thing. I think that we can use AI against transcription to be able to better categorized But again, that's also in the marketplace dynamics of being able to connect advertisers to podcasts but also can be used for better SEO for our customers. So I think that's maybe a longer way of just saying we're not really sure We are very focused on it, as is everyone else I think cannot be paying attention to it. It is what I think. It's impossible. I don't think you cannot pay attention to it. It's everywhere, right, but I have heard recently that the new title that's coming up is C-A-I-O like your chief artificial intelligence.

John W Gibbons: 35:59

There's a thing on our. It's the roll my eyes and can't see it because we're not on a video podcast. We can't see us rolling our eyes here, but I do think that there is probably like a role for that And I have absolutely no doubt This is not a profound statement at all, sam, but I have absolutely no doubt at all that it is an enhancing technology for our industry And we are not in the wait and see what everyone else does, but we're absolutely in the stage of like. Let's begin to experiment with where it can help us and see, and so I think, like everyone else, we're not entirely sure, but absolutely know that it's valuable.

Sam Sethi: 36:31

Now, last question. One of my favorite books is from an ex-colleague of mine, ben Horowitz, who used to be the CTO over at Netscape, and he wrote a book called The Hardest Things about the hardest things And what keeps you awake at night, john, It's a really good question And this is like a business thing, but I have children, so I think a lot about that.

John W Gibbons: 36:53

It's a different podcast perhaps, but I would say what keeps me up most at night is really around my themes, and I know it sounds like a humble bride here, but it keeps me up at night about how my teams are connecting with each other. We again, as we sort of discussed, we were a single company that did hosting for many years. Since the end of 2021, like basically since I joined we have purchased AdvertiseCast, which is an enormously successful marketplace again for podcasters to be able to connect with advertisers And for advertisers to be able to connect with high-value podcasts. We have purchased Par, which is the podcast ad reps, which we rolled into AdvertiseCast. We have purchased Glowfm, which is a subscriptions service. We didn't talk about this, but we purchased a company called Julip, which is the largest independent advertising marketplace in Germany. That is also in Austria and Switzerland and we've just expanded into Spain, and then we have a company called Parercom, which is a domains business on the website hosting business, and so what keeps me up at night is we are really focused on bringing these companies together into a single solution that can serve our customers.

John W Gibbons: 38:12

And it's really difficult. Building companies and maintaining companies is incredibly difficult. It also is incredibly fun, but as I lay in bed at night and sort of stare up at the fans spinning, i think to myself like, oh, did I connect this person correctly to this person? Did I communicate well enough that, while some of this may feel bureaucratic, there's a real value to our customers and there's a real value to us like just selfishly, financial value to us for doing this? And so I really spent a lot of my time like concerned about the culture that's being built and also being insistent upon why we are doing it, and also being very specific about holding each other accountable.

John W Gibbons: 38:50

I hope that I'm a relatively nice person, but I don't want to be a nice person. That's not my goal. My goal is to be a fair person, And I want to make sure that I don't fall prey into being like a people pleaser and trying to do this with folks, but instead being very fair and making sure that we have agreements in place as a company and that we are all relentless about holding each other accountable to our agreements not the expectations that we carry with each other, but agreements And I love podcasting, i love audio, i love storytelling and I love creative people. I fancy myself a creative person and I have manifested that creativity in building companies and creating search and recommendations and discovery and helping advertisers. But the business really doesn't matter as much as the people do.

John W Gibbons: 39:35

And again I know this might sound sort of disjure to talk about. Or you love your people actually wonderful, but it's really hard and it takes a lot of control to give people the freedom to not feel like they're being controlled. I'm not trying to be semantic there, but like I spent a lot of time trying to say here's how we operate as a company and now you're responsible for going out and being independent and coming back and showing how you contribute to us as a company. And it keeps me up at night, both in a way that makes me nervous and also that brings me like an enormous amount of pleasure to see those teams and those people celebrate their wins and then to also gleefully take trash that people throw at me and then recycle it and give it back to them. So hopefully that doesn't sound like a humble brag or a dodge to the question, but that is what keeps me up, both in the good and the bad way.

Sam Sethi: 40:23

I often say I'm the chief janitor in many ways, you know cleaning up.

John W Gibbons: 40:28

That's the exact same term. We should start that as CJR on the yes, but I think the only way that I would I love you, can you sum up Sam, because I talk with him all the time. But I think the other way that I talk about it is you know, unlike a janitor that throws stuff out, i really want to like have my people come and complain to me and tell me that I'm not doing a job or that I use the wrong tone here, because I need to like improve myself. I, selfishly, am very eager to like make myself better, even though my feelings get hurt regularly about things, but to recycle it and give it back to them in a way that's good. But yeah, it's so funny, i said the exact same thing. I love it that you just said that.

Sam Sethi: 41:06

Now look, i haven't got this at the back of my mind, but we've seen Spotify take on multiple companies, parkhouse being one and CharterBall and others, and then they've had to make these massive redundancies recently within their podcasting stream. How is the pressure now? I mean, have you been able to retain your staff? I mean, this is the culture that you're trying to build. How has Lib Tim been in this economic downturn?

John W Gibbons: 41:31

Yeah. So I'm sure that different people listening to this will have different perspectives on my answer here, but I personally am very proud of how we have managed the downturn. We have had some layoffs, but many of those layoffs have not been a result of our revenue. Like we have grown And again I would just point you all back to our audit that does have compliance associated with what we did, just like make it up right, like to real-audit And so we have grown significantly. Some of that has been the acquisition, but a lot of it is organic. Like we are growing as a company, but again that's because we're evolving as a company and generating more cash. So I hear really good about that.

John W Gibbons: 42:10

The jobs that we have shed, jobs that either we've been able to consolidate and that's really difficult Like it's hard letting people go like that probably need not be said, but it is.

John W Gibbons: 42:20

It's very difficult let people go.

John W Gibbons: 42:22

But again we are very focused on being a financially responsible company And that's not just been toutowering to our board or we are not public any longer but or for press releases. But again we're very focused on profiting operational excellence because we want to make more money so that we can make more things for our customers and we can hire more teams, that we can invest in things like AI, like, if you're not making money and you are just on the principle of like, we're here to support creators, which is great, but if you're not making money, you can't invest in things to help them grow and to help yourself grow. So we're very focused on that And I would like to think that we're being thoughtful when we do need to cut back in certain areas And look, we're not perfect And I think, like other companies, we've probably made some mistakes along the way, but we really have not had this shed. We haven't had the mass layoffs that other people have had, because, again, i think that we've been very responsible about the way that we've grown.

Sam Sethi: 43:15

So you talk about increased revenues. Sorry, and just for clarity, are you now profitable?

John W Gibbons: 43:21

We are profitable across our business sheets. We are. I mean, it changes right from quarter to quarter, but yes, we are.

Sam Sethi: 43:26

Well done, because you know, obviously Acast are trying to get to that point and so it's both of the five?

John W Gibbons: 43:30

Yeah, absolutely, i certainly pay attention to our competitors when I pay more attention to my customers in our own business. Those guys are dealing with a whole different set of challenges than we are, and I would say likewise, we're dealing with a lot of those challenges that they're not. So I don't know if they're entirely apples to apples, but I would say for us, we are very focused on our finance And, again, that is not just to be dirty capitalistic pigs It is part of that But it's also that we are very focused on being able to make money so that we can reinvest it back into the company and do stuff for our customer. We're focused on that.

Sam Sethi: 44:03

Final question, john, we started off with your title of interim CEO. Why interim, i mean?

James Cridland: 44:09

what's the board waiting?

Sam Sethi: 44:10

for.

James Cridland: 44:10

Yeah, yeah, that's a good question.

John W Gibbons: 44:12

Yeah, so it's a really good question. So, as I mentioned, my previous role was Chief Product Officer and President. When I joined, we decided that I was going to focus on product. Product was really an area that we needed, and my role as president was really sort of like internal. So I mean, i certainly had to deal with, like you know, shareholders and I work with our board and work on sort of relationships that we have, but I was really sort of focused in that area.

John W Gibbons: 44:40

As we've gone through this transition to the board, it made sense that I take on this role, as we kind of think about what we want to do in the future And, as I mentioned, we delisted and we're getting our house in order and we have a lot of sort of change going on And I'm in a very good position to be able to help orchestrate that, and so the agreement that we had was that I would come in and elevate that role to not just being internal but also external And then we would evaluate it and see what we want to do Not to go too far off in less fields here, but like I'm married and I have kids and that's a really important job to me, i think I get it right, maybe like 87% of the time, i don't know, but I'm very focused on like closing that gap right, like I want to close that gap, but at the same time I like the people I work with. I really genuinely like the people I work with and we have the right people in place here and I really care a lot about the people here And I'm in the fortunate position in my life where what I do for work is also what I do for fun. This is what I do on my free time and I really like it. And so the agreement that we had was that I would take this on and I'm happy to, and it's a real compliment that I don't take lightly but that I would take it on at the interim agreement that we would kind of evaluate if this configuration is working out well, and so we don't have like an immediate timeframe on it. But I would say that, as of today of our recording, our board as generously has confidence in me, i have confidence in our board and I have the confidence in our company And, as far as I know, the company has confidence in me, and so we're going to continue with that for the time being and then evaluate as we go.

John W Gibbons: 46:16

I'm a product person and product people, we work in iterations, right, and so I apply that to everything in my life, so we'll see where it goes. But that's kind of the reason it is a little complicated And we talked about that And I was like guys, i think we're fighting questions And maybe again there's like kind of nothing to see here. But I think for my own well-being, also for the board, like we're like let's just call it in terms for right now, but really like not a lot has changed outside of the fact that I'm just doing a little bit more externally than I did previously.

Sam Sethi: 46:40

Well, look, i wish you well with that, john. Thank you so much. It's been great catching up on Libsyn, and we wish you all the best in the future. Obviously, our doors open for James and I, so please knock on it and tell us what you're up to. We'd love to report on it.

John W Gibbons: 46:53

Well, thank you, i appreciate that, and I guess I would also say that I so absolutely appreciate what both you and James do, and you both are largely responsible for a lot of the education that I have, and so, me personally, i'm very appreciative, and then we at Libsyn are incredibly appreciative as well. So, yeah, thank you.

James Cridland: 47:10

John W Gibbons, the interim CEO for Libsyn. You can find out more, of course, at Libsyncom, And thank you to them for being our sponsor on the Pod News Daily all this month as well. Sam, I thought the days of exclusive shows were over. Spotify isn't doing any more of those are they?

Sam Sethi: 47:31

Well, we did think that that was the most sensible strategy going forward, but nobody sent the email to Audible clearly The thoughts because they've just announced a sci-fi comedy called Third Eye starring Neil Gaiman, will Wheaton and many others. It's coming out in October. I mean, audible is an entity to itself really. I mean it doesn't feel part of Amazon. It sort of feels like they bought it but kept it separate. They do have podcasts and audiobooks in the same space, but they just don't really talk about podcasting. They just call it exclusives. So yeah, they're just weird. That's all I'll say.

James Cridland: 48:11

I think they're one of those first mover advantage companies that are doing pretty well and making lots of stuff which at some point they will release onto OpenRSS, but it may be a number of years. West Cork was one of those that was released onto OpenRSS a couple of about a year or so ago and was very good possibly even longer, but that used to be an Audible exclusive. So perhaps they're doing that, but they're certainly very good at signing up all of the big stars Now.

Sam Sethi: 48:41

Audible's app. Is that downloaded from iOS? I can't remember when I so long ago since I downloaded it, i don't even know. And if it is downloaded from iOS, are they then paying the Apple tax?

James Cridland: 48:55

I think they are. So they're part of Amazon And I think what they're doing is the Audible's app, which you can download from the Apple App Store. I think the Audible's app is one of those that allows you to. You know it works on your phone, but you need to sign up on the web first. So I think that they're sort of getting and you know.

James Cridland: 49:17

Coming back to the Apple Podcasts conversation, apple Podcasts don't have a website version. They've got this thing called Apple Podcasts Preview, which has been previewing there for the last 10 years, so clearly isn't necessarily fully there. If they were to roll that out and make that a bit more of a web app, then they've got the capability of buying a subscription on that way And so therefore they can avoid giving Google 30% of their cash. And I'm sure that that's exactly the same way with Audible. Certainly the Amazon Kindle app that I have on my on an Android tablet that allows you to read the books that you have bought, but if you want to go and buy a book, then it basically says no, you can't buy a book from this app. You have to go onto the website. It doesn't even give you a link, it just basically says amazoncouk or amazoncomau, go over there and buy a book, so you know, and why not? I suppose it's one way of getting past the Apple tax or the Google tax, i guess, yeah.

Sam Sethi: 50:24

I mean, i get credits and then I go and use my credit, so, oh well, just wondered how they were getting around it. Now let's move on Trends. There's a bit of trends that we want to cover. Buzzsprout Friends of the Show Sponsors of the Show have posted its platform stats for June. James Apple, as we just said just now, is up nearly 2% month on month. What's caused that blip?

James Cridland: 50:46

Yeah, well, i think this is continued work by Apple to get rid of Apple Core Media. You'll remember that it's still the number three in terms of OP3, you know in terms of how big it is But Apple Core Media is basically the thing that your phone calls upon car snap if it doesn't know any better, and Apple made that change slightly earlier this year and it just takes time for that change to come through, i think. So, yeah, so I think that that's essentially what's going on there, but it's a fascinating page, buzzsproutcom. It's well worth a peek because there's all kinds of stuff in there, including not just podcast apps, but devices and countries and device types and everything else, but also the first seven-day download figures. So if you're doing 1,109 downloads, then you are doing better than 95% of every single podcast out there. If you're only doing 31 downloads in your first week, then you're doing better than half of all podcasts out there. So it's a great page to go and have a peek at. Okay, let's have a quick zip around the world, James.

Sam Sethi: 52:04

In Spain, the Spanish language premium podcast company Sonara, which charges €4.99 a month to access its fiction and documentary podcast, is to switch to ad-funded models. Does this mean, James, that subscriptions don't work?

James Cridland: 52:21

Well, it means that, certainly for Sonara, which is owned by a big media conglomerate, basically sounds as if patience has run out. The co-founders are both leaving, so we understand they're going to cut staff Now there's about 40 staff that work there. They released 84 podcast titles last year. They didn't want to call them podcasts, by the way. They wanted to call them premium audio because they felt that they were a bit better than that. They've realized that that doesn't work for them.

James Cridland: 52:49

I have to say we're in the middle of a cost of living crisis. Mortgage payments are going up and up and up and up and up. €4.99 a month to listen to a few podcasts that you can probably get the same sort of thing free from other people is quite a big deal, i think. So, yeah, you can probably see that the writing is on the wall for that sort of company. That said, Spain is full of premium podcast companies who charge. Podimo again is charging, evox is charging. 68% of original podcasts from these large companies are only available if you pay. So perhaps what's actually going on here is that Spain is seeing a bit too many paid for podcast companies And perhaps there's a bit of rationalization going on in that market.

Sam Sethi: 53:43

Well, yeah, i mean. it's interesting, though, that they've got a culture of payment, as opposed to several other countries which don't have a culture of payment. Anyway, good luck to you, sonora.

James Cridland: 53:57

In job news. Not much job news at the moment going on, But one of them is Ruth Todd, who is the new Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer at Bonneville International. She'll oversee the content, vision and execution across Bonneville International, including the podcasts that they do. Bonneville International is a big radio broadcaster in the US as well. There are still jobs going on, though, even though we are in the middle of summer, in the Northern Hemisphere at least. If you want to find out what those jobs are. Podnews has podcasting jobs across the industry, across the world. Podnewsnet slash jobs. The tech stuff On the PodNews Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 54:40

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the PodNews newsletter. Here's where we do all of the tech talk. Sam, where do you want to start?

Sam Sethi: 54:48

with this. In May 2018, apple Podcast requested that all podcast feeds should be secure and that, in the future, a secure feed would be required for analytics and to submit new podcasts. It's still not a requirement, i hear you say, but as of today, the data from the podcast index suggests just 3.8% of the 4.1 million shows available are not served using a secure feed. In 2018, that figure was 83%, so it seems to have worked, james.

James Cridland: 55:17

Yeah, i think it's worked without them actually having to make it the rule, which is pretty clever, and it's exactly the right thing. Secure feeds are important. Secure feeds make sure that only the right people know what podcasts you listen to. You need to be a little bit careful of those podcast companies who are doing individual domain names for their shows. Those are visible to anybody that can see your internet traffic. So that's not necessarily a good thing, but certainly having a secure feed, one that starts HTTPS, is a good thing as well. Apple, of course, have made two big changes, one of them talking about secure feeds and one of them talking about that they don't want email addresses in RSS feeds anymore. So many podcast hosting companies have taken email addresses out for a more enhanced privacy, but that does mean that claiming podcasts on other services is a bit of a nightmare, and so there's currently a very messy conversation going on Very messy, very messy in the podcast index, github, talking about a new field which might be called podcast authorization. It might be called podcast verification URL.

Sam Sethi: 56:33

Well, I mean, on Friday I was listening to Dave and Adam and thanks Dave for pushing it forward for phase seven as a priority. But I was pulling my hair out because they were talking about oh well, we could have the user update the podcast TXT field. a bit like DNS. It's very simple. I'm going 99% of people can't update their DNS. Why do you think they're going to be able to update the podcast TXT field? They don't know what that means, right? So then Dave said, correctly, well, we can have a new tag and that can contain a string within it that sends the user back and they can log in, but then we can wait for it to pod, ping to update.

Sam Sethi: 57:11

I'm thinking poppings, not that stable and the time that it would take, and I'm thinking why are we reinventing the wheel? It's basically oh, i mean, i go to. I mean, as Elon still can make it work. you know, i go to the Twitter API, i just put in my credentials and boom, it brings me straight back to my website instantly. That's it. It doesn't have to be any more difficult And the user experience has to be that simple.

James Cridland: 57:36

There seems to be an awful lot of you know foot dragging because nobody wants to do full OAuth and you know, and fiddling around with other forms of doing it, and nobody's actually thought about what the UX really ought to work.

Sam Sethi: 57:50

Exactly. And so when I hear the use of well, we just said it by popping, i still feel, oh well, it's not going to be simple, but we'll keep knocking the door and see what happens. But yes, we'll see phase seven of the namespace, where this goes Now. Moving on Now, one of the things in my dim, distant past I was at Netscape and I was in the browser wall And one of the things that we found worked very well was being able to use HTML naming numbers or whatever you want to call them HTML three, four, five, right, a short hand for new features and functions that we were releasing within the browser. And again, i think iPhone uses that. I nobody needs to know what an iPhone 14 feature set is. They just know oh, you've got an iPhone 14. It's short hand.

Sam Sethi: 58:40

Now my little idea and thought was look, rss 2.0 has fundamentally died on the Harvard site. It hasn't been updated since 2009. There's nothing been going on The advisory board. I don't think are even active in extending it. Adam is the inventor of podcasting and he is part of the podcast namespace.

Sam Sethi: 59:01

Look, why can't we like Dave Weiner did? just simply, you know, he one day announced I'm going to call it podcastRSS2.0 and he just skipped 1.0 and took over. Why can't we use the phases of the podcast namespace, 1 through 6, to delineate what I suppose are the version of RSS is being used? I wonder whether we can then try and nudge people to go faster or quicker by saying oh well, that host only supports the 2.04 version of the namespace and that one is 2.06, because at the moment most users won't look at the detail around what host or which app supports which features, so maybe we can call it podcasting 2.01, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and that is a way of creating a label or a badge that you can put on your website or in your app or on your hosting site to say exactly what you do, and then, when you click on it, it will take you to phase 6 and show you exactly what's available.

James Cridland: 1:00:08

Yeah Well, I would certainly agree. I mean, I think, look, I think one of the problems with the new podcast namespace is that not all of the new tags are a good idea. Let's be frank, some of the new tags aren't a good idea And so it's probably up to a separate body, maybe the podcast standards projects, to basically say we like these, we have wide support for the transcript tag. Let's just say as an example, and maybe the transcript tag is RSS 2.1. And if you support the transcript tag then hey, great, you're in RSS 2.1. And if you support the transcript tag and the location tag, then it's RSS 2.2. But you don't end up saying that you support 2.2 unless you support both of those tags.

James Cridland: 1:01:01

And I suppose the difficulty just comes in finding tags that everybody can buy into, that some people aren't going to get upset about, And I suppose you can see from Acast's point of view, their transcript tag. It won't work with dynamically inserted ads, So perhaps that's one of the reasons why it's not there. I mean, I would only quote to you what Wikipedia has said in terms of calling it RSS 2.0, when Dave Weiner came up with that idea. Wikipedia says because neither Weiner nor the RSS Dev Working Group had Netscape's involvement, they couldn't make an official claim on the RSS name or format. This has fueled ongoing controversy citation needed in the syndication development community as to which entity was the proper publisher of RSS, And so I think I'm just kind of slightly nervous about taking Dave Weiner's baby away from him. He's pretty good at calling out people he doesn't agree with. I should probably just focus on let's just call it the podcast standard project, version 2.1, version 2.2 or away we go, But then that would mean that the podcast standards project wouldn't actually do some work.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:17

And, on that note, the reason why Netscape didn't respond, because I do know because Mike Homer, who was a head of marketing, died at that point and Mike Homer was the lead person who was pushing forward for portals and news sites and using RSS. So unfortunately, mike brilliant guy, that he was passed away. So that's why I think it was a little bit naughty of Mr Weiner. But other than that, i think one of the reasons in the browser ward that it works and I think if you could call it a podcast ward now is that it gives the non-technical user a way of doing it. So web developers, for example, would say, oh, i've got to use the latest version of HTML to get that competitive advantage. And in the same way, hosts, hopefully, would say, well, i've got to use the latest phase or the latest version of RSS namespace to get a competitive advantage.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:05

And apps are like the browsers should be also implementing those features. So in a co-operative market space I said earlier you know, fountain and pod first don't support the location tag, but podcast guru and pod fans do. So hey, i've got a competitive advantage there And I want to be able to talk about that and therefore have a label or a badge that says hey, you're not the latest, greatest version, i am, and I'm ahead of you And maybe they'll be ahead of me in the future.

James Cridland: 1:03:34

I completely agree And I think you know, having something and this in my brain is something that podcast standards project should have been doing is actually having a pretty, a pretty easy, straightforward okay, if you support this one tag, then you can say that you support, you know, version 2.1. And if you support these two tags, then you can claim that you support version 2.2. But if you don't support either of them, then you can't. And at the moment we've got companies who are using the podcast standards certified logo who don't support some of the tags, and I don't think that they should be able to claim that they support it, because at the moment it's all or nothing. If there was a standards group, which I've been talking about for years and years if there was a standards group, i think that that will be a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:27

Anyway, there's my little idea. See what people think. Podcast events on the POD News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:04:34

Events coming up include the People's Choice podcast awards. We should mention those. They are open, the nominations are open now And you can register and vote for whoever it is that you want to. It's in its 18th year. It's run by Todd Cochran. It's a very good podcast awards. There's even an award there called After Adam Curry, So worthwhile giving that award a minute ago. There are more than 30 categories for you to enter at the People's Choice podcast awards. Let me just tell you what the URL for that is. I think it's podcast awardscom And your owncom. Yeah, yes, get your owncom, don't leave me, todd Cochran. The Paris Podcast Festivals competition is looking for entries. You've until July the 17th. More details about that in the POD News website. Just give a search for Paris Podcast Festival and you'll find that Also. The independent podcast awards are taking place in the UK and the International Women's Podcast Awards. You can enter for those right now And last week we had a great interview with Naomi Mellor talking about events.

James Cridland: 1:05:50

Podcast movement in Denver is happening. Of course. It's the next big event in the middle of August August the 21st to the 24th. Then the world will be going to Podcaste Asia, which is in KL in Malaysia, on September, the 6th Loads of really good speakers speaking there. Podcaste Asiacom is where to find more information on that. And, of course, there's POD News Live in London on the 27th of September. Podnewsnet slash live has all the details on that. It's cheap to go to but it's definitely worthwhile. Tickets for that are selling fast. It will be a sell out, so you should be getting in there and buying your tickets now, while you still can. Podnewsnet slash live is where to go for that. And there are more events, both paid for and free, at POD News virtual events or events in a place with people. Pod Newsnet slash events is where to go. Boostergram corner corner corner on the POD News weekly review.

James Cridland: 1:06:54

Oh, it's our favorite time of the week.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:56

Sam Indeed It's a big Instagram corner, james.

James Cridland: 1:06:59

Yes, And Gene Bean has sent us 10,000 sats. While talking to the masses, He says I think we'd be well served to refer to that simply as an in app in ecosystem token that facilitates sending money that can very easily be converted back into fiat money by the recipient. I agree wholeheartedly. He continues conceptually, converting fiat money to sats is no different to me purchasing tokens at a fair to use with the various vendors. I have said this in the past. I go booth to booth and exchange tokens for something of value. At the end of the day, The vendors are able to easily exchange the tokens they receive for fiat money. Completely agree. I think that talking about Bitcoin, talking about sats, scares 95% of people away And you get people like Adam Curry going. But it's decentralized and it's nobody's in control And there's somebody who's you know, gatekeeper and all of that.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:57

That's absolutely fine, you're going to get us so kicked off.

James Cridland: 1:08:01

We're used to that. We're used to that When we go and we go to the local corner shop and we want to buy a coffee or something, we use a Visa card. It's not the world's hardest thing. Yes, there are problems in keeping a certain amount of money hidden away for a user to spend, but it just worries me that we are talking about Bitcoin and sats as if it's Bitcoin and sats Yay, it's just the function of sending money to people. That's the whole thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:37

Yeah, i'll take the other side of that. I mean, look, you know, you could say, well, don't talk about URLs and HTTP and WWW and just call it a link or whatever. It's vocabulary. People just have to get used to the vocabulary And once they're used to it it becomes second nature. You know, if my 93 year old father-in-law can zoom through COVID and understand how to do it? you know, it's just a learning curve And I think People will is just, a lot of people are feeling nervous because it's not going as fast or as far as we hoped or as quick, and therefore, well, if it's not getting quick enough, let's find another way of doing it, let's say something else quickly, because that might help us. And I'm just. I think we should stick to our guns. That's my opinion. It's maybe different to others.

James Cridland: 1:09:22

Yes, well, we will see Dave Jones, another 10,000 sat. Thank you, dave. Very kind of you. Dave was talking about my plan for some coding time last week. that never really happened. I had the same experience this week. James my family was out of town all week says Dave and I plan to get hundreds of lines of code written. How many lines of code did I actually write? about 50? Yes, i know exactly the thing you have to be in the, in the space for writing code. I ended up getting very excited last night and writing all kinds of things And redoing the footer on the pod news website and all kinds of things, because all of a sudden I thought, right, that's what I can do. I've done pod news for the day, that's what I should be doing. But, yeah, never really sort of happened. So yes, i'm glad that you've spotted that as something from.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:08

Kyren as well. Yeah, i'm working on the education with the value for value podcast season three starting next week, Delayed due to some of those pains we're talking about, but I'm doing the annoying stuff so that others won't have to. Yeah, he's done a brilliant video and audio. I watched the video and he's shrinking the one I watched down. I highly recommend people go and watch it. It will explain what value for value is in a very simple, logical way.

James Cridland: 1:10:35

Yeah, which is a good thing. So thank you, kyren, if you get value from what we do. The pod news weekly review is separate from pod news. Sam and I share everything from it. We really appreciate your support. You have two ways of supporting us either with that easy to understand visa card or master card or American Express Pop along to weekly dot pod newsnet. You can support us with as much as you like in there And it's a regular support, weekly dot pod newsnet. Or you can support us with Sats by hitting the boost button in your podcast app or just streaming Sats. That's all cool. If you don't have one of those pod news dot net, slash new podcast apps will help you find a new app. Now, what's happened for you this week, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:11:20

Well, not too much, but one of the things that I did really enjoy listening to is Twitter episode 934, because Leo has finally started to understand that micro payments might be the way to save himself, because one hour 21 minutes, that's all I tell you to listen to. You don't have to listen to all. They have a whole conversation earlier about the you know Twitter's API charging, reddit API charging, advertising failing, subscriptions not working. One percent of his listeners only paid to go into his private mass, not into discord. And then one of the guests said well, hey, have you heard of this thing called micro payments? And, of course, leo immediately poo poo said oh, that's just Bitcoin. You know that doesn't work. Oh, it's all corrupt, but they persist in the conversation, totally getting it wrong.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:12

By the way, he was the blind leading the blind in the conversation. Oh yeah, you get these super fans who do boosts and they score $500. And it's just awful to listen to, but you can see the pennies beginning to drop and they're beginning to realise that the advertising model won't be sustainable going forward And subscriptions do not work period, end of conversation And so they need to find a new way of doing. And then they open up the conversation. I thought that was interesting about newspapers and the original way that RSS and blogs were done And could you pay for articles on a per article, and so it was a good conversation in the centre. I finally think they're beginning to say, oh, is there another model out there? And this is what I mean about it's taking time, but I think the pennies are beginning to drop.

James Cridland: 1:13:00

You haven't been on any podcast yourself, have you recently?

Sam Sethi: 1:13:03

Well, you know, it's nice to be asked. If anyone wants to ask me. I occasionally have an opinion, but this time I was on RSScom's podcasting 101 show with Ashley Grant And she was asking me about pod fans. So thank you very much for doing that. Now, james, what's happened for you this week?

James Cridland: 1:13:21

Well, i was on national TV, which is very exciting, from this very office on the ABC. I said do you want me to go into the studios? You know, i'm in, i'm only 20 minutes away by bus. And they said, no, we don't have access to any studios for this sort of thing, mate, and so you can just do it on your, on your zoom. So, yes, so it was very nice And like I was there, it was like there.

James Cridland: 1:13:49

So yes, so what was quite funny is I bought all of the, the fancy shelves and things on the on the Monday or the Tuesday and cut them down and and installed them and everything else And then by Friday, there I was doing a podcast in front of the fancy shelves with the books on the you know, and all of that. So that was all good. I've also been on a few podcasts which should appear any minute now. So that's all nice And yeah, just sort of hard at work, as ever, really. And you're away next week, Are you not?

Sam Sethi: 1:14:25

Yes, i'm on a dog holiday, it's to be clear. So I'm down in Cornwall, in Pads, though. Very nice, excellent. So have you found a guest?

James Cridland: 1:14:35

co-host. Yes, i can tell you who that guest is. Exclusively That guest, because we don't have enough middle aged white men. That guest will be Rob Greenley.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:47

Is he finally split up with Todd, then Is he coming over to us then?

James Cridland: 1:14:50

Is that a permanent replacement, maybe, maybe. This is the plan, see ya, so looking forward for Rob being our guest this time next week. We'll see how tight we can. We can get it, but Rob will be a good man, so that should be good fun, and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks time. Indeed, i enjoy your dogging holiday. Thanks, and that's it for this week.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:19

You can ask James and I questions using email to weeklyapppodnewsnet. No one ever has a, no one ever will, but we keep asking. There's been.

James Cridland: 1:15:26

One email Has there.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:27

We have had one email So we're no longer email virgins. That's excellent.

James Cridland: 1:15:31

Right, but anyway, our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila D. We're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Prout. Podcast hosting made easy Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:46

Tell your friends and grow the show.

John W Gibbons: 1:15:48

And support us And support us The. Pod News Weekly Review will return next week. Keep listening.