James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 14th of July 2023.

Sheila Dee: 0:04

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

James Cridland: 0:14

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News.

Rob Greenlee: 0:16

And I'm Rob Greenlee from Smoke and Life Media, streamyard and 100TV Network's new show Trust Factor with Rob.

James Cridland: 0:22

Greenlee In the chapters today. Happy Birthday. Podcasting AI gets into ads.

Christopher Lydon: 0:27

Is Spotify seeing new record downloads and also If the Marshall lighted and said take me to your real voices to get the pulse of this nation, I'd say try the podcast.

James Cridland: 0:39

An interview with the first podcaster ever, christopher Leiden, on what he thinks about podcasting 20 years on. This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzzsprout. Last week, 3,822 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with powerful tools and remarkable customer support. And now AI is here to help you publish your show. And by Pod News Live in London this September. There are tickets available right now at podnewsnet slash live.

Sheila Dee: 1:09

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:14

Well, sam is doing something with a dog in Cornwall. So instead, on podcasting's 20th anniversary week, so delighted to have one of the first podcasters in the world, rob Greenlee, is here. Rob, if there's anybody who doesn't know who you are, who are you?

Rob Greenlee: 1:30

Well, I'm a podcaster and a video show host and long time podcast platform executive, going back to as far back as 2005. So this topic in this episode is terrific, and I started on the radio in the Seattle market in 1999 and podcasting since September 16, 2004 with the Web Talk World Radio Show, and I've been working since 2005 on podcasting and online video distribution at places like Microsoft Zoom Podcasts, podcast One Spreaker, the Spreaker Live Show, lipson and Podbean. And I'm now working on a variety of new projects as a partner with StreamYard Podcast, easy 100 TV Network, spoken Life Media and my new show Trust Factor with Rob Greenlee, and have been doing a show for a long time called the New Media Show. So happy to be here, james.

James Cridland: 2:22

Yeah, and it's great that you are here as well. Podcast Easy I think we might have said podcast EZ. Sorry about that, ez. Sorry about that. That makes no sense whatsoever. I think we first met at an NAB radio show in Atlanta in Georgia, when you were working at Spreaker.

Rob Greenlee: 2:39

Yeah, we did. Yeah, actually, I had you on as a guest on my podcast, my Speaker Live Show.

James Cridland: 2:44

Oh right, there you go. So there's a thing that was a long, long, long time ago.

Rob Greenlee: 2:49

Yeah, it seems like a forever yeah absolutely.

James Cridland: 2:52

Well, let's get going for this week, then, shall we?

Rob Greenlee: 2:54

Yeah, so let's kick off with podcasting's 20th birthday. As you say, james, it was the 20th anniversary, or the weekend, of the very first podcast, back on July 9th 2003. So there are now 4.1 million podcasts on the open RSS and about 42% of Americans now listen to a podcast monthly. So listenership continues to go up, while the numbers of active podcasts slowly decline, unfortunately, I think, in the economic era here, as we have seen younger audiences grow and continue to claim that YouTube is the leading podcast discovery platform, this 20-year mark is a significant point in the maturation of the podcasting medium.

James Cridland: 3:39

It is, isn't it? And yeah, I mean we'll probably come back to numbers and YouTube and Spotify in a bit, but yeah, 20 years old for podcasting, you were one of the first podcasters to actually use the word podcast. I noticed all those years ago I caught up with the first podcaster in the world, christopher Leiden, last week, who was brilliant to speak to. I was a little bit overawed, I have to say, because I've been playing that clip of Christopher and Dave Weiner the first podcast ever for quite some time. So it was quite overawaring to meet him in person. But I started to ask him did he think that that was the start of something special?

Christopher Lydon: 4:27

I did. There was a tingle of experimental adventure and I thought it was a moment because the Iraq war was already a moment in my view a completely unexamined, undebated, illegal American war, a horror story unfolding, and I thought, on a podcast, people could break the public silence and say just that. And they did Some of them.

James Cridland: 4:49

So it was very much around open viewpoints on that.

Christopher Lydon: 4:51

Well then, a stuck American conversation. There had been no debate, no intelligent inquiry about that war, much less about George W Bush in general, and suddenly the people had a voice, and I thought that was critically interesting and important.

James Cridland: 5:06

The latest research says that around half of Americans are listening to podcasts every single month. Now, why do you think podcasts are now so popular?

Christopher Lydon: 5:15

Well, there are so many kinds, james, as you know better than I, I think the American people are starving for good conversation and they find enough of it to come back time and again to podcast. That's a very broad statement, but I think we're just. We're evolving a new conversational system in this far flung democracy, and podcasting has a peculiar place in a very energetic, interesting place.

James Cridland: 5:43

I mean, instead of just bloggers and academics. Podcasting is now, of course, dominated by very large companies, and they're doing lots of entertainment and they're doing lots of other things as well. What do you think of that? Do you think that's been a good or a bad thing?

Christopher Lydon: 5:58

It's not the way I expected it. I mean, the instant commercialization of this space was a surprise and, I'd say, a disappointment. On the other hand, it's okay. They have their audience. I guess Other people have ours. I love the spirit of this little collective. We belong to hub and spoke really some extraordinary people and voices all over the place Tomorrow. Adi Shai does art criticism for real people. Erica Howman does her own reflections in the northern tip of Vermont with the natives, regular people, and that's another peculiarly powerful voice. We do our own thing but there's room for everybody. The voice part is key. It has much more force, interest, punch than a letter to the editor. I'm with Studs Turkle about this fabulous instrument, vox Humana. It's an amazing thing. Everybody gets access. That's a leap.

James Cridland: 7:00

Have podcasting changed the way you thought it would? 20 years on?

Christopher Lydon: 7:05

Well I'd say, yeah, it's bigger, it is more commercial, it's not monopolized you cannot monopolize human voice and it's still growing. I mean, this is a very fluid world of media, but I think that the Marshall United said take me to your real voices to get the pulse of this nation and say try the podcast.

James Cridland: 7:27

Arguably that's what radio was for, and of course you have a tremendous radio background as well. Where do you think radio is going?

Christopher Lydon: 7:35

That's a very good question and a dark sort of question. I think podcasting is a terrible burden on radio, public broadcasting and otherwise. I note that Vermont Public Radio has dropped the radio. It's now Vermont Public WGBH dropped the W, as if to say we're not a broadcast station anymore, we're some sort of other service. I think they're selling the peculiar brilliance of radio short, it's cheap. Anybody can listen on a very cheap instrument, whether you're out farming or doing the dishes. It carries the human voice. I think radio has stopped believing in the higher calling of radio itself and I think it's a damn shame.

James Cridland: 8:19

Yeah, where do you think if you were in charge of a radio station now, what would you be doing with that?

Christopher Lydon: 8:24

Well, I'd be doing a whole lot of things. I'd be doing a lot of podcasting. I'd ask Erica Heilman to teach the world how to listen, but also how to listen to regular people. Our podcast, I say with some chagrin, not exactly, but is public people, people who've written books or maybe want to know their prize or hold a professorial chair somewhere and they're advocating something. I would do what Erica does so brilliantly, which is just get the voice of listeners. Jay Allison did great work on this from the beginning listener IDs, but let people talk until the dime drops or they cough up the secret.

James Cridland: 9:07

Yeah, yeah, so getting lots more other people's voices on the air, rather than just the silky voice toast.

Christopher Lydon: 9:14

Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, so silky voice. Well, yes, I don't know, and me too, they'll throw that at me too, but I've got an untrained voice. I sound like my brothers. We talked the way our parents taught us to talk. There's nothing trained about my voice, so we're going to keep it that way.

James Cridland: 9:33

And it's a thrill, having played that first minute of the first podcast so many times. It's a thrill to see the voice behind you Tell me. Tell me or see the face behind the voice.

Christopher Lydon: 9:45

James, let me ask unblushingly what do you get still 20 years out of that conversation with Dave Lennon? It was very earnest.

James Cridland: 9:53

It was a real moment, wasn't it? It was a real moment in technology where, all of a sudden, we were moving away from blogging of the written word to the spoken word, and I think it was such a change and I think you know. I'd like to ask you back that was, you know clearly, the first episode of Radio Open Source. That podcast is still going 20 years on. How has that podcast changed over the last 20 years?

Christopher Lydon: 10:22

Well, of course we didn't call it a podcast in that first thing with Dave Weiner. He had said to me you know Radio, I Know syndication and programming, let's see what we can do. And that's what we did. Eventually it became called a podcast and we put it out in the air regularly. It keeps evolving. We call it arts, ideas and politics with Christopher Biden. It's pretty much anything we find interesting. It could be a book.

Christopher Lydon: 10:48

I'm stunned and thrilled, actually, that I to me, the most satisfying shows have been about music from you know famous conductors, but also, to my own musical passions, billy Holiday, Johnny Hodges of the Ellington Band. We did a wonderful show with Robin Kelly about the rediscovery of Errol Garner, a genius of incredible proportions, and these things somehow tap into stuff I love profoundly. I didn't know whatever go there. I did a podcast just a few months ago with my youngest brother who I hate to say it but was dying of ALS, and I thought, well, he lived in Ireland in a community with handicapped people that he had invented and I thought, well, we can talk every day practically and make a kind of history of this disease and his life was so glorious and so much fun and so creative and productive that it almost outweighed the incredible injustice of his ALS. But it was an original thing and people did enjoy it.

Christopher Lydon: 12:02

I rediscovered my childhood, the magic of my parents and his. There were six of us and turned out to be a very wonderful, wonderful set of lives, privileged by good heads but wonderful parents and a generally good steer in life. So there's a surprise. You couldn't have imagined that as a commercial radio piece, but it ran for about 30, 40 minutes and it's good.

James Cridland: 12:31

You have a 20th anniversary episode just out, haven't you?

Christopher Lydon: 12:36

Yeah, with Erica Heilman. And there's another, just unbelievable joy to discover that woman's voice. It's just magic. And it's more than magic. It's not just a beautiful voice, it's a voice that says talk to me, it's safe to talk to me. And she's had incredible results with that among her neighbors, I mean among her friends, among people she doesn't know, of all kinds. So that was, it was just fun to stop and think about once again what radio can do.

Christopher Lydon: 13:10

I was a child, so to speak, of Tony Schwartz, an advertising guy in New York, and I met him through politics. He did commercials for George McGovern, but his whole theme was, and he did famous Coca Cola ad, the real thing and all this sort of stuff. But he said the message comes in through the ears, the video is just to distract you or to hold you. He would do an office clock with the second hand moving slowly around only to tell you it's almost over, but then he would deliver the punchline in a voice. And he believed that the voice was magic even in our evolution Into the sound inside the womb, the two hearts beating, but then out on the planes of Africa listening for trouble, listening for wildlife, listening for everything. It's built into us. We learn so much by ear, and that enthusiasm is part of my work.

James Cridland: 14:07

I was listening back to one of Dave Weiner's very first shows, Morning Coffee Notes and there's this wonderful episode which is just the thunder and the lightning going on and Dave just commenting on the tremendous noise and the tremendous light and everything else, and it's the most fascinating listen.

Christopher Lydon: 14:29

Isn't that incredible. You can't see it, but you heard that.

James Cridland: 14:38

Well, there are many people who know their entire career to your pioneering spirit.

Christopher Lydon: 14:45

20 years ago. That's funny. Not the least of the interesting thing was that neither Dave Weiner nor I ever made a dime on what we were in on creating. But that's life. It's made life a lot more interesting for a lot of people.

James Cridland: 15:06

Three cheers and three cheers to you as well, Christopher Leiden. Thank you so much.

Rob Greenlee: 15:11

Christopher Leiden from the Open Source podcast back in the day when podcasting was born in early July of 2003.

James Cridland: 15:17

Yeah, now, you were running the Web Talk radio show at the time. You weren't quite doing an RSH-based podcast though, were you, or were you?

Rob Greenlee: 15:24

No, not in the summer of 2003. No, I wasn't Quite yet, but I was still doing a lot of other distribution back then.

James Cridland: 15:32

Do I remember rightly that you had a real audio files or something on your own servers or that sort of thing?

Rob Greenlee: 15:38

Yeah, yeah, back in during that time most of my listeners actually came from on-demand playback via streaming of all things, and early podcast precursor sync and download platforms like Microsoft Sync and Go, windows Media Player, streaming Radio and the Serenade platform and on my 15 radio stations and XM satellite radio network that I was on back in those days. So the topic of the show that I did back then was talking about the opportunity and changes happening because of the growing tech developments of the Web and the Internet and how it was impacting society and business and human communications back then. So it was a really kind of a hot topic and there was a lot of mystique around it back in those days and it really, you know, it really fomented a fairly large audience. I think I calculated over a million weekly listeners to that show with all the distribution I had back then.

James Cridland: 16:33

So how do you think podcasting has changed over the last 20 years and what's been the surprises that you've seen?

Rob Greenlee: 16:39

I think most people that were from that era would probably give you a similar answer to this, but I think it's. The real professionalization of the medium has really kind of been the standout thing for me and has slowly become kind of a mainstream commercial medium of sorts. Right, I think we're reaching that kind of scale, but yet it's still open and mostly an independent medium. And certainly the quality bar of the quality of audio and the content that's being produced in the medium has definitely raised significantly. And it's been raised significantly because of the talent and the diversity and the investment that has come into the medium over the subsequent years and the expectations also and the competitive environment are stronger than ever. You know audiences are responding to shows that have some innovations and creative content in there.

Rob Greenlee: 17:35

I think in the early days we certainly didn't have any of the true crime stuff or the radio dramas, and social relevance has really become really important. And then the things that have really surprised me in podcasting is increasingly podcasting is kind of an activist agent of change and that's something that's really new. It certainly didn't exist as much in mainstream media but we're definitely seeing it as a response to things that are going on in our current mainstream media and those changes are seen across YouTube or podcasting and in other platforms now as well, and it's rapidly, you know. I think it is rapidly replacing mainstream media and we will likely be the medium that is increasingly trusted as we look to the future, as these independent voices telling important stories and exposing, you know, the truth and building trust with audiences is a role that, I'll be honest, the older mainstream media has kind of been walking away from and you know, where do we put our trust is really the bigger question.

James Cridland: 18:53

Yeah, absolutely, and I mean it was interesting hearing Christopher Leiden speaking basically saying the same sort of thing that actually there was nowhere at the time talking about the Iraq war, there was nowhere where you would get real voices talking about that, and that's where podcasting started. And so I think you know there's certainly a real I was going to say trust factor there. But that's of course the name of your brand new show. Is that essentially what you talk about a lot in that show?

Rob Greenlee: 19:23

Yeah, it's about aspects of in our society and all of our lives that are based on our ability to decipher and create trust relationships. So it's the more I think about it, the more I talk to other people about this topic. It just really resonates because people are really questioning a lot of things in the world right now. And one thing that goes back to what you were saying earlier is that and it gets back to there wasn't a lot of news podcasts back in the early days of this medium. My biggest day of listens to my radio show was the same day as the 9-11 attacks in New York. My stream requests skyrocketed, so what people were looking for was alternative media sources to hear what was really going on, and they saw that I was on a streaming radio network through the Windows Media streaming platform and people were just going there and Rose trying to get the latest news.

James Cridland: 20:27

Yeah, and I remember it being very, very high for us as well, and also high during the London bombing as well in 2007,. I think that was yeah, yeah, the day after, if you imagine, in London one day you've been told that you have got the Olympics and how amazing that is, and then the very next day, three bombs on the underground, that was a real seesaw of experience. I guess You've obviously worked in the business for 20 years, working at Spreaker and BlogTalk Radio. When I first met you, you've worked at Libsyn as well and, of course, podcast one. What's the biggest disappointment that you have over the last 20 years?

Rob Greenlee: 21:14

Yeah, I think it was really just. It required so much patience in this medium for so many years and faith that this medium was going to grow. So I think it's safe to say that the slow growth of the medium which has, I think, been healthy for the medium, but it's also been it kind of tests your patience and I know it caused a lot of problems. I was working at Microsoft too. It's like the slow growth was like how do I convince the executives that this medium is worth investing in, right? Yeah, and so that was the big thing that I kind of struggled with back then around listening as well as content.

Rob Greenlee: 21:53

There wasn't a lot of podcasts back when I was working on Zoom at Microsoft back in 2010, 2009,. There just wasn't a lot of shows, but that's when a lot of the big shows started, like Joe Rogan started back in the 2009 time frame. So I had to be very patient over the 20 years that I've been involved in this medium and I'm still a little disappointed that we're only reaching 42% of the audiences have adopted this medium yet. So I still think that there's still upside to this. If you think about it, most other markets, right, like mobile phone adoption I think we're at like 90% or something like that, so my hope was we'd be able to get over 50% by now.

James Cridland: 22:37

Yeah, I have to say I'm kind of done with the whole. How many people are we reaching? And I'm much more excited with the how much time are they spending with us? Because how many people are we reaching?

James Cridland: 22:52

Spotify is number one, right? Spotify? Apparently number one for monthly active users on any podcast platform that you go and you have a look at. But in terms of downloads, Apple is number one by far, and Apple is doing nine times the amount of downloads as Spotify. So I'm kind of there going. You know what? I think the 42% number it's 43% here in Australia, by the way, we're beating you but I think the 42% number it's a nice number. But I'm far more excited about seeing what happens when podcasting gets to half of the listening of radio, or gets to a third of the listening of radio. It's nowhere near that yet, and so once it does that, then you get the money coming in because you can see more people spending more time with the medium. So I'm kind of trying to get the industry to move away from the weekly or the monthly reach number.

Rob Greenlee: 23:49

Right, yeah, and I think over the past few years we've seen large investments in the medium as well and I think there's been progress made.

Rob Greenlee: 24:00

But as we see now with the economic kind of pullback, it's been a little disappointing to see the industry kind of slow down a little bit in some aspects and I felt that even back in the 2008 to 2010 timeframe, when was the last major economic kind of decline, and I do think that podcasting will do that pretty well, but there wasn't a lot of advertising and economic activity going on in the medium back in that timeframe.

Rob Greenlee: 24:32

But I do think that the medium will come back again, but I do think that there may be, as we come back, there's going to be fewer active shows that are building audiences is kind of where we're at and probably where we'll be, and I'm hopeful that we'll see a big burst in new content that comes as we move out of this economic decline. But I'm also patient with that and thinking that it may take some time for that to come back and that the economic benefits of podcasting is able to be spread across larger numbers of shows, and I'm still hopeful that that'll happen, though I'm not sure we're seeing it happen as of yet.

James Cridland: 25:17

What do you think the biggest achievement in podcasting has been, finally, in the last 20 years?

Rob Greenlee: 25:23

I think the biggest thing is being able to maintain the open aspects of the medium, based on RSS and podcasting being really really accessible and available to anyone, from a listener to a content creator standpoint. And I really feel strongly about this because I think podcasting is an open medium to anyone really since day one I mean, even if I think back to 2004,. Anyone could do this. The only real gating characteristic of podcasting even back in those days was your technical skills. Anybody could do it. So the issue has really been participation and attraction and having content that appeals to a diverse audience and a diverse set of content creators. The medium has never been blocked or stopped any potential person from joining the podcasting medium as a listener, creator or a company creator.

James Cridland: 26:24

It's an open medium and it's always been that way as far as my memory of it, given that we both come at this from radio and we know how much radio is incredibly expensive in terms of getting a transmitter, getting time on the satellite, getting whatever it is. The cost of actually getting the audio to people is a tremendous cost. And here we are with most podcast companies charging a relatively standard $20 or $30 a month and Spotify and Apple giving us space on these platforms. It kind of still bulls me away a little bit. When are they going to start charging for?

Rob Greenlee: 27:05

that who knows? Yeah, well, yeah, that's a big question and they may not right Because there's other ways to monetize.

James Cridland: 27:14

Yeah, well, yeah, maybe, maybe, Anyway, yes, so happy birthday podcasting. 20 years old this week. Should we move on to some of the other stories that we've have?

Rob Greenlee: 27:26

Yes, I think we should, james. Let's jump into some of these stories, because some of them are pretty interesting. So Futuri Media has announced Spot On, which is an AI-powered tool that builds radio and podcast commercials on the spot. So this is another economic opportunity, I suppose. Now sales teams can deliver spec spots and commercials to any client, regardless of their size, and do it instantly is what the CEO of the company has told us. So what do you think about this, james?

James Cridland: 28:01

Yeah, I think it's really interesting. I used to write radio commercials a long, long time ago, and so I'm there thinking, oh great, I've been replaced again by computers.

Rob Greenlee: 28:09

Somebody still needs to write the commercials, don't they?

James Cridland: 28:13

No, this particular tool does that too. So I've actually used a different tool. I was showing a tool off. I was speaking at Radio Days in North America in Toronto, and I was showing off a tool from a different company which does exactly the same thing. You fill out a brief form on a website and within 30 seconds it has written a commercial for you, it has voiced it, it has found some music, produced the whole thing and there it is, so you can actually show off to your client. This is the sort of thing that you will sound like. Now Daniel Anstandig is a very clever man and he has basically said you know, you can use this for spec spots, you can use this for, you know, showing clients what you might sound like. He's not necessarily saying put them straight on the air, as they currently sort of you know work, but I'm sure that there will be many lazy radio stations who do exactly that, you know what I mean.

Rob Greenlee: 29:09

Well, so there must be some sort of a prompt to the AI about what to put in the spot right.

James Cridland: 29:16

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Rob Greenlee: 29:16

Ballpoint or something like that.

James Cridland: 29:18

Yeah, no. So the one that I've used. It basically says you know what's the product and what do you want people to know about it, and you know, do you want people to visit your website or do you want people to come down to the store and all that kind of stuff. So it does a quite good job, you know. In terms of that, it would be really helpful, wouldn't it, rob, if I could actually find and play once. So this isn't from SpotOn, this is from a different company. It's from a company called AdThos and I asked it to write an ad for Pod News and I basically said you know, it's a daily newsletter, you should go and get it and blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is what it wrote, are you? Ready Attention. Podcast enthusiasts producers and creators.

Random AI voice 1: 30:01

Are you looking for a quick, daily update on the global podcasting and on demand audio landscape? Look no further than PodNewsnet. Curated by 28 year radio and online veteran, james Cridland, this daily newsletter offers an international view and contextualizes the podcasting world.

Random AI voice 2: 30:19

Plus, you can trust that our content is reliable and up to date.

Random AI voice 1: 30:23

Visit podnewsnet today and get informed on the latest podcasting news and trends.

Rob Greenlee: 30:28

Wow, it even had two, two talents in there right?

James Cridland: 30:32

Yeah, exactly, I asked it for a 30 second ad. It gave me 33 seconds, so already, but that's not bad, is it? That's not bad, I didn't. I basically told it what to you know, told it a couple of things about me and it made up all of that stuff about you know. You can rely on our accuracy.

Rob Greenlee: 30:51

So it didn't come from you, so it's a claim that's totally innocent right, it's a claim that they have completely made up.

James Cridland: 30:59

What do you think about? I mean, obviously you know trust and everything else. There was a story a couple of weeks ago that the ringer were looking into automated ad reads that AI were going to give with Bill Simmons's voice, but AI was going to actually script and voice them. What do you think that does to trust in people's? You know, in hearing the ad?

Rob Greenlee: 31:25

Well, I guess the big question is should that be disclosed, or is this a game of trying to make it so good that you can't tell? You know, I think that's the bigger question. I think around trust, because if it's done well, you probably can't tell the difference, and if it's in his voice, you know, like you can create a voice clone today. You know, I think we need as an industry to decide if we want to disclose this or if we want to just try and play a little you know magic trick on our listeners and see if they smell a fraud here or something and see if they realize there's a company called Veratonic Voice.

James Cridland: 32:11

That is also voice cloning as well, and one of the things that they're doing is they've taken the morning talent on the radio station. They've cloned the voice so that the morning talent is reading the weather throughout the rest of the day and cross promoting into the morning show. Now that to me sounds, you know, seems a very sensible thing to do, you know, kind of kind of makes a bunch of sense, and it occurs to me that there's a bunch of things, of really interesting things, that you could do with podcasting and podcast ads on there. It also strikes me as being a little bit creepy, and I can't work out whether it's creepy or good.

Rob Greenlee: 32:48

Well, I think it gets back to is are you feeding it a script where it's reading the script, or are you feeding it? You know a little bit of information and it's ad libbing everything else. So is it? You know who is it that's delivering the content?

James Cridland: 33:02

Exactly, exactly. And where are these claims actually come from?

Rob Greenlee: 33:05

Right and, technically, legally, anything that's output and this is what Gordon Farmer has told me is that and you probably heard this too is that you don't really own the content that's generated by an. Ai right. Nobody owns it. So it's like can you claim copyright on a podcast that's generated by AI? That's a big question.

James Cridland: 33:29

Yeah, and I'm wondering whether or not you can claim copyright on the prompts that went in. And perhaps you can do that claim copyright on the recipe. But anyway, who knows More exciting things from future media. Anyway, apple is looking at doing more smart and exciting things in iOS 17, aren't they?

Rob Greenlee: 33:53

Yes, they are. Finally, it's been a few years since Apple added the episode artwork tag to their namespace and it's taken them this long to actually add it to their listening app. So it's an interesting situation. Fortunately, it doesn't happen that often, but this is definitely something that Apple has taken some heat around over the years that they wanted everybody to support this tag, but they didn't support it. So I'm happy to see this. I think it could generate some interest in getting a more creativity in the episode level. And then I've been thinking a lot about these AI platforms that are generating images now, how maybe potentially podcasters could use like the Dali platform to generate episode art, but I've been playing with it myself and it does a horrible job of putting text, accurate text on images. It's just not capable of doing that yet, and I think that's a big limitation to using AI to generate episode art.

James Cridland: 35:01

Yeah, indeed, there's lots more details on the Apple Podcasts website. If you play around with the new iOS 17, you'll find all kinds of smart things that they're doing with the episode art. But I think it'll make a tremendous difference, and I think either you can make your podcast look boring and have exactly the same artwork for every single episode, or you can work up some brand new episode art for each individual show. So you'll notice, on this show there's a picture of you on it, rob. Oh, really, well, because yeah, because we can do episode art with, as you can with most podcast hosts. We can do episode art with our sponsor, buzzsprout, so that's a smart thing too. So that should be coming out, I think, in September. That's normally when the new iOS comes out. So I think, if you don't have episode art yet, go and sort it out, because otherwise you'll look very, very boring.

Rob Greenlee: 36:00

It's going to spike the use of Canva. I think yes.

James Cridland: 36:04

Yeah, exactly, spotify is looking interesting.

Rob Greenlee: 36:10

They are doing something to boost their content consumption here with this autoplay release that they had here in March, and it's starting to show in the numbers, so when you finish an episode, it automatically starts playing another episode, which is an experience that we've all grown accustomed to on YouTube, right, and we know how successful that is. The question is is that, well, where do these episodes you know? How are these episodes selected? Are they selected based on your library or are they just randomly selected? I know on YouTube sometimes they deliver to you on the next episode really old content which maybe is based on popularity or long term play numbers, but it may not be from the most recent episode from your library or your list of shows that you have subscribed to.

James Cridland: 37:03

Yeah, I think the thing that worries me slightly is what happens if you're listening to Serial and you finish episode two and then all of a sudden you get episode nine and you find out that Adnan's out. That's really confused.

James Cridland: 37:18

Yeah, that's not going to be any good, so hopefully they don't do that sort of thing, but really interesting looking at the numbers. Now Buzzsprout, our sponsor, shows numbers for Apple podcasts, which doesn't include Apple Core Media, so you can see Apple podcasts increasing an awful lot at the moment. But Libsyn, which does match those two together, is showing some tremendous growth for Spotify. They've grown every single month this year so far in terms of their share of downloads on the system, and it must be something to do, I think, with both auto play and also with this new scrollable sort of TikTok-like interface that is on the platform as well.

Rob Greenlee: 38:01

Yeah, if they can duplicate what the experience of YouTube is. If you think about the user base the majority user base of Spotify, it's younger folks that are used to that kind of TikTok experience right, where there's always something coming right. So it plays into that behavior and I think it definitely will spike. The consumption side, which is Spotify is needed.

James Cridland: 38:24

Help with that for a long time, yeah yeah, so interesting to watch that the Canadians are doing some very strange things with their media laws, aren't they?

Rob Greenlee: 38:32

Yes, they are. They recently, I guess, passed a Canadian bill called C18, which is forcing Google and Facebook to pay to link to Canadian news sources. So there's a little bit of kind of economic interest here on the part of the Canadian government, I think, but it could be bad news to some degree for Canadian news podcasters. So the big question is is it only going to impact like news podcasters like the CBC or those type of networks, or is it going to go down to individual indie podcasters that are kind of doing news content? I'm not, I'm not sure on that.

James Cridland: 39:16

Yeah, and will it actually be Canadian news podcast or will it be news podcasts? Will it be news sources, just all news podcasts?

Rob Greenlee: 39:23

right.

James Cridland: 39:24

Yeah, I remember the Australian government tried something on here which was quite similar, and both Google and Facebook. Well, facebook instantly turned off all news pages on the Facebook site, so I couldn't even see my own for the Pod News page on Facebook. I couldn't even see that because they ended up turning it off. So there was a thing. So clearly they've already got that technology there which they can. I believe that Facebook is already blocking and I think that Google have said that they are going to block and they've got the technology there, but the government has gone. Oh oh no, we didn't mean that they changed their mind a little bit, but yeah, it's really interesting. That's a completely unforeseen, I think, thing of you. Know what's going on here? What will happen to Canadian news podcasts and what does that mean for Apple podcasts, for example? What does that mean for Spotify? Does that?

Rob Greenlee: 40:26

mean that, yeah, it's not clear. Yeah, it's just not clear, and I don't. I mean, what is the Canadian government thinking when they do this? What's the purpose of what they're doing here, Is it you know?

James Cridland: 40:39

I don't, I mean I think, I think quite a lot of it is boggling.

James Cridland: 40:42

I mean I mean quite a lot of it is. You know, Ripper Murdoch down here has always hated Google because Google has taken all of its money away and so therefore, he's always been trying to needle Google and Facebook in some way, and that was a good way of getting in with the government and basically saying, no, you're going to, you know you're going to pay for, for sending us traffic, the rest of us pay for advertising. So I always find that very, very strange, but anyway. But the Canadians have obviously had a look at Australia and said, well, that seems like a good idea and I've done a slightly more polite version. But yeah, who knows what's going on there? And Blueberry, you, you do a show every week with Todd Cochran. Don't need me. Todd Cochran and I have to have to play the jiggle. It's part of the rules. He's launched a brand new thing, hasn't he? Podcast, podcast stats as a PWA, as a app, like experience on a mobile phone.

Rob Greenlee: 41:44

Yeah, it's for all those stats addicts. He's playing into the podcast stats addicts yeah, I was talking to him on the on the new media show earlier today about this app and he was. He was all excited that you know, all of his podcast hosting customers will be able to get access to their stats anytime they have the the need for a dopamine hit of their numbers.

James Cridland: 42:05

Yes or not?

Rob Greenlee: 42:06

as the case may be, Maybe it's straight into depression at that point, but who knows, yeah, but but yeah, I mean he sounded pretty excited about it, so yeah, really, really smart idea.

James Cridland: 42:18

So basically, it looks like an app, plays like an app. You actually install it by going to the blueberry website, but, yeah, so you'll be able to see your podcast stats at any time of the day or night. Of course, you can do that on most podcast hosts, but not quite in in that in that smart way. So, yeah, so whatever Todd is feeding his dev team right now seems to be doing, seems to be doing really well, yeah you should go out and buy a little bit more of that.

James Cridland: 42:48

In terms of people, it's been nice to actually see some new jobs and some new and some new appointments being made. Recently, rachel Gheaza has been appointed chief content officer at Audible. She's been content EVP since June 2020. She joined the company from Spotify in April 2019. And another person who's joined a company from Spotify is Spotify's former director of global podcast sales, david Cohn, who's joined Cumulus Media's Westwood One as senior vice president of sales and digital partnerships, which is a nice move, joining the excellent Pierre Bouvard over there, who's a very good man with all of his stats and numbers and everything else. Jobs at the moment going include podcast relations manager at the PodWise group in the US, a sound designer for ARN here in Australia. If you fancy a job in Sydney, then go for it. If you want to be a podcast editor or a co-host at CGTN in Beijing working for the Chinese government anyone Then you're more than welcome to that as well. And Lemonade Media also looking for a vice president of sales and partnerships.

Rob Greenlee: 43:57

More jobs like that and jobs across the industry and across the world at podnewsnet there seems to be a lot of jobs in ad sales and content, which are the two main vectors right now that I think are happening in the medium.

James Cridland: 44:14

Yeah, lots of ad sales, lots of content, which is nice to end up seeing, but I think overall, for the last month there was nothing in there. I mean, there were three jobs going and it's really nice to actually see a bunch of new jobs actually in there, including if you want to work in Dev, by the way, you can be the senior manager in product management for Apple podcasts. If you fancy going to work in that particular, quite literal walled garden in Cupertino, then there's a job going there as well. So, yeah, all kinds of jobs going on, which is great to end up seeing.

Rob Greenlee: 44:54

Yeah, no, it is good to see that. I mean, it may be a sign that the economy is turning around. So who knows?

Sheila Dee: 45:01

The tech stuff on the podnews weekly review.

James Cridland: 45:06

Yeah, it's that stuff you'll find every Monday in the podnews newsletter. Here's where we do all of the tech talk. So it wasn't just the anniversary of the first podcast this week 20th anniversary, of course but it was also the second anniversary of the first Boostergram, rob Greenlee. That's awesome. Yeah, so they've been going for two years. They don't feel as if they've been going to that long right.

James Cridland: 45:30

Yeah. So Boostergram, if you don't know, it's a message with money attached, sent by a listener to a podcast creator. Adam Curry always gets very grumpy whenever I talk about Boostergrams because I'm always doing it wrong, but hopefully I'm not doing it too wrong this time, adam. But anyway, and just as a data point, over the last 30 days at least $10,100 has been sent to podcast creators that way, so that's a pretty good amount of additional cash that podcast creators otherwise probably wouldn't be seeing, because there's no easy way of giving people small amounts of cash or indeed large amounts of cash. I can hear both Dave and Adam getting very annoyed that I just said small amounts of cash. So there we go. But yes, let's move on from that. Another podcast hosting company with another smart dev team.

Rob Greenlee: 46:20

Yeah they've added per podcast and per episodes support for the location tag. So who's this, rob? This is rsscom, so they've added this support for the location tag. There's been an interest in tagging location to where a podcast is published from.

James Cridland: 46:43

Right, but this is not that. This is where a podcast is about, where a podcast is about Is about yes, so if you're doing a podcast about the Eiffel Tower, then that's what you put in the location tag.

Rob Greenlee: 46:56

Oh, the topic of the podcast, the topic of the podcast Physical location. Yeah, yeah yeah, Because.

James Cridland: 47:02

So I'm listed on some podcast apps. As you know, this very show, for example, is listed on some podcast apps as being from Brisbane. Well, I mean it is, but it's nothing to do with Brisbane, is it? Whereas if there's a show about Brisbane, then it should absolutely appear in there.

Rob Greenlee: 47:21

So great, so what location would you put in here for your podcast?

James Cridland: 47:25

So this one wouldn't have one, because it's not about a specific location. Got it Is the quick answer.

Rob Greenlee: 47:31

That is a good answer.

James Cridland: 47:32

Yeah, and you know, and you can put in fake locations in there. You can put in you know locations I think Gitmo Nation is something that you know, again is a big Adam Curry thing but yeah, so you can put the locations that you know that don't necessarily exist, but you can also put in open street map IDs so you can actually get really clever. You could in the future. If somebody was going to do something really really smart, you could potentially ask your podcast app. I wanted to hear any podcast about tourist attractions in Denver and Colorado.

Rob Greenlee: 48:08

Right, yeah, the immediate type of podcast would be like a travel show. That would come to mind as the best use case for this.

James Cridland: 48:17

Yeah, so I'm very excited by that. I should say I'm an advisor to rsscom and also an advisor to mapsfm, which is a great service. If you've not seen it yet, you should probably go and have a peek, rob.

Rob Greenlee: 48:31

It's basically a map of podcasts about places, right, I would hope that it would be. The domain name is pretty clear. The domain name is pretty good.

James Cridland: 48:44

So yeah, that is a really smart thing, and that's, of course, what the podcast location could actually dive into. I don't know whether you've seen very many emojis in podcast titles, but I would probably avoid doing that, rob. There's news that they might be making some car stereo systems crash, which is probably not a thing that you want to happen in your car.

Rob Greenlee: 49:07

Yeah, I would imagine that the car stereo systems don't support emojis. They're probably from a different era.

James Cridland: 49:13

Yeah, I think some of them I remember listening to this must be five or six years ago, an episode of 99% Invisible. I think it was an episode of 99% Invisible which was actually looking into why 99% Invisible was crashing some cars because they used the percent sign. So even the percent sign was confusing for some car systems. Way back in the day that was 10 years or so ago, but now emojis and stuff like that as well. You have written something in the show notes we got show notes for this show and you have written something in the show notes about legal agreements in here.

Rob Greenlee: 49:50

Yeah, I guess there's been some recent talk in the podcasting industry about using emojis in reference to coming up with agreements for doing things contracts of sorts and you have to be careful using the up sign or the thumbs up. Yeah, the thumbs up Right. It might bind you to Do.

James Cridland: 50:12

you think this is a good idea? Thumbs up.

Rob Greenlee: 50:14

That's not a signature Right to some business contract, so you have to be careful of that.

James Cridland: 50:20

Well, wow, there's a thing. I was on a podcast earlier on this week, the Voiceworks Sound Business podcast. I was speaking with Pod Pods Adam Shepard Pod Pods, apparently and a daily newsletter about podcasting who knew as well as me and Jim Salverson from Voiceworks and the topic of conversation was RSS. The future of a podcasting are a bad thing. Holding us back See if you can guess which side I was on.

Rob Greenlee: 50:50

It depends on, I think, the generation of the individual writing it. I don't know it's. You know, if RSS is the future, I hope it is, but I'm also fairly pragmatic about this topic too, that it you know everything I think is on the table right now.

James Cridland: 51:07

Yeah, no indeed, and I think Adam Shepard's point was that we need better metrics and better stats for podcasting. I have to say I think stats in podcast advertising have significantly increased over the last couple of years and there's much, much more data now in terms of that. But yeah, absolutely, if we weren't using RSS, we could get much better stats. But not using RSS also and getting stats for advertising also means an end to open podcasting, because you can't do both, so it's, so it's got to be, behind a password or a login, that there's a form you fill out to sign up.

James Cridland: 51:46

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I've now, of course, completely spoiled what I talked about in that podcast, but if you want to go and have a listen to it, it's called VoiceWorks Sound Business and it's available wherever you get your podcasts, probably, and I'm sure you talked in more detail than we talked about.

James Cridland: 52:03

Yeah, yeah, absolutely so dive in and a big many congratulations to Sam Sethi. He may be on holiday with the dog in Cornwall, but also he has opened up pod fans to the next phase of development. You can now see it. It's in Alpha. The wait list is Well, you can join the wait list now. He says the Alpha is complete. I think it still says Alpha when you're there playing around with it. But you can get in, you can play around, you can fiddle around with it. It's at podfansfm. Really interestingly, though, they support all 25 new features in the new podcast namespace. So whether it's location, whether it's live listening, whether it's sound bites, trailers, transcripts, all that kind of stuff, and, of course, value for value as well, it supports all of that stuff. So it's really interesting, a different paradigm for a podcast app and well worth having a play with. It's on desktop only for now, but podfansfm is where to go, where to sign up. So many congratulations. That's probably why he's on holiday.

Rob Greenlee: 53:18

I'm guessing I'm tired of working the product management cycle on that, so is there any forecast that he has for when he's going to put it into beta in the beta phase?

James Cridland: 53:29

Well, that's an interesting question. Don't know Is the quick answer. If I were him, I would be making sure that everything was working and just sort of slowly adding new people. I think he posted a screenshot on his Twitter because he still uses Twitter, because obviously he hates people, but he's on Twitter and he was posting a screenshot and I could see that there were 6,000 people in the waitlist. So he will be slowly approving all of those, I would have thought. But yeah, it's a pretty exciting thing and worthwhile taking a peek at.

Rob Greenlee: 54:11

So I'm surprised you didn't talk about threads at all in the show today.

James Cridland: 54:18

Well, yes, haven't mentioned threads. Are you there, rob? Yes, I am there. I'm there too. I noticed that Ariel Nissenblatt is there. Whenever you want to feel, whenever you're feeling a little bit down about podcasting, just go and have a look at Ariel's recent posts, because, my goodness, you end up feeling podcasting is brilliant, isn't it?

Rob Greenlee: 54:41

That's right, it's so exciting, it's inspirational, right.

James Cridland: 54:46

Yeah. Do you think threads will win or lose in this battle?

Rob Greenlee: 54:51

I don't know I don't really get the entire vibe of it and why it's important to be over there to some degree. I mean, it does kind of pull on your time that you're already spending it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, all these platforms already so does that mean that I spend less time over there and then spend more time on the thread stuff? And I'm having a hard time justifying it at this point, but yeah, I mean, obviously I'm there as well.

James Cridland: 55:26

You'll find me as James Creadland, bne, because I couldn't get James Creadland for some reason. Probably the student from Bristol got that. I have the girlfriend of mine.

Rob Greenlee: 55:35

Rob W Greenlee is mine over there. It's the same as my Instagram account. So, when they transferred it, and that's why threads really got a significant boost. I think they're at like 50 million users now, or more. It was because it was so easy to just transfer all of your followers from Instagram over to the threads and pow everybody's all networked up and we're all fired up and off to the races, but it's still dramatically smaller than Twitter.

James Cridland: 56:05

So yeah, no, indeed, indeed, I, yeah, I. It was interesting. I thought all threads is going to be great. And then, over the last couple of days, I've been really interested in the BBC presenter news from the UK, which will have passed everybody else by, but I was really interested in that and I just found myself going to Twitter to find out what the latest news was. And so Twitter is clearly still, you know, winning in that.

Rob Greenlee: 56:31

But spaces is a big, big area too. In in Twitter, people are, you know, engaging in large events over there, and that's, that's a differentiation as well.

James Cridland: 56:43

Yeah, absolutely so. Interesting, interesting times. Now let's take a quick look at some awards. The People's Choice podcast awards those are run by Todd Cochran as well. Hang on a minute, don't leave me, todd Cochran.

James Cridland: 56:55

Yes, the 18th annual podcast awards are open for you to register and for you to vote as well. You should jump along now. You'll find that at podcast awardscom, it's been honoring podcasts globally in 30 categories for the last 18 years and is a good thing. Other awards for you to enter the Paris podcast festival that you've got until July, the 17th. So quick, quick, quick. If you or Vite, vite, vite, I should say if you're wanting to enter that particular podcast.

James Cridland: 57:29

The British podcast awards you can vote for the listeners choice award. You can vote for this award if you like. It'll be a wasted vote because we won't win, but nevertheless, you're more than welcome British podcast awardscom for there and you can. Also, if you're podcasting, you should remind your listeners of the awards and make sure they vote, apparently. And also, entries are open for the 2023 International Women's Podcast Awards. You've until mid-September to enter. And, in terms of events, are you coming to podcast movement in Denver? I know that you were sort of on the fence about that earlier, rob, but are you actually going to be there?

Rob Greenlee: 58:06

Yeah, I got asked to moderate a panel at the event, so yeah, I'm going to be there.

James Cridland: 58:13

Excellent. Well, I'm looking forward to being there too. It should be a good time of it. I wonder whether it's going to be as busy or whether the economic uncertainty as the phrase is, you know, is going to have any effects, but certainly, in terms of a great place to meet people and to catch up with old friends, it's a good place to end up going. Is there anybody that you're specifically looking?

Rob Greenlee: 58:40

forward to. So it'd be interesting. You know I've been going to a few other podcasting conferences and a lot of them are kind of soft. You know, with the economic times people are pulling back on travel because getting airfare tickets is expensive. I'm sure that you have experienced a little bit of that because you do a lot of traveling.

Rob Greenlee: 58:58

Oh, my yeah so yeah, and the hotels are not that inexpensive these days either. So I think that's a little bit of a headwind and I think it also explains why we're seeing a lot of the podcasting conferences doing more local events, trying to go to where people are and try and make that brand connection.

James Cridland: 59:18

Yeah, indeed, and I think local events are probably a pretty big thing. Here's a useful travel tip If you're not a member of Bonvoy, which is Marriott hotels frequent hotel staying thing, then make sure you're a member of Bonvoy because you might notice that all of the podcast movement events are in Bonvoy hotels. Yes, I did notice that. There must be a plan there. So yeah, there must be a relationship.

James Cridland: 59:45

Yeah, there must be some form of relationship going on there, but podcast movement should be a fantastic thing, so very much looking forward to going there. Other places that you can go to include podcast day Asia, which I'm also speaking at in KL in Malaysia. On September the sixth is podcast day Asia, and radio days Asia is September the fifth and sixth as well, and there's the radio info Asia podcast awards, which are open for entry. You'll find a link to that in the podcast newsletter as well. The London podcast festival, returning from September the seventh to the 17th. That's in Kings Place in London. Lots of big shows that you can go and watch there as well. And, of course, pod news live, which is in London on September the 27th. That's the day before the British podcast awards.

James Cridland: 1:00:35

We are very much looking forward to this. We've got some amazing speakers speaking some. If you're a long term listener to this show, you will know that we have somebody who we're really wanting to announce, but we're still a little bit worried about whether or not that person will actually turn up. So we're kind of we don't. We don't want to jinx it, basically, but you should, but you should best, you should. You should absolutely turn up. I mean apart from. Apart from that, you know, some of the speakers include Ross Adams, the CEO from a cast, and many, many others as well. You can find out more details on that and to book your tickets less than 50 quid it's really cheap to get to pod news dot net slash live and there are more events, both paid for and free, at pod news virtual events or events in a place with people, and if you're organizing something, you can tell the world about it and it's free at pod news dot net slash events.

Sheila Dee: 1:01:31

Pod news live, where the podcast industry connects. Get your tickets now at pod news dot net. Slash live Boostergram corner corner on the pod news weekly review.

James Cridland: 1:01:48

Oh, it's our favorite time of the week. Rob it's Boostergram. Yes, it is.

Rob Greenlee: 1:01:52

I guess you've gotten a few sats in the door.

James Cridland: 1:01:55

Well, we've got. We've got. It's been a relatively quiet this week and I think one of the things I was talking to Sam about is that we're probably going to see Boostergrams and things going a little bit quieter during the current interest rate. You know, hikes and inflation and everything else. But even so, we've got two. I will do the second one if you like, but which is? What are the? What are the boosts that we have, that we have received?

Rob Greenlee: 1:02:26

Well, you got one from Gene Bean. Great show and interviews as usual.

James Cridland: 1:02:32

4096 sats yes, that's a 4k boost one hour in, yeah, so why I? This week, I looked at all of the data as to when people were sending boosts and when people were listening, and so the fascinating thing is, you can see from the streaming sats of people just paying a certain amount of sats every single minute. You can see where people listen, where people skip, where people you know stop stop listening, all of that kind of stuff. But you can also see where people boost you, and so Gene Bean boosted about an hour in, and the show, I think, was about an hour and 10 minutes last week. So thank you, gene, for that, and 11 minutes in a boost from Boris Kosielski, who just said thank you for your podcast.

James Cridland: 1:03:17

Well, thank you, boris, for the very kind boostergram 4,959 sats, which there must be a reason for that. I don't know what the reason is, but still. But there we are, 11 minutes in. So, boris, thank you for that, and in total, last week we made 22,670 sats. We should never forget that there are lots of people who just support us using streaming sats, so thank you for that. If you've done that, that's worth $6.70. There were eight people who streamed two boosts and people listened for 420 minutes, which is nice. It's really interesting seeing all of the stats and the data from the streaming sats. It's not something that I've spent much time doing, you know, over the last couple of months. Do you get to see any of that data from the new media show? Because that takes streaming sats and boosts as well.

Rob Greenlee: 1:04:04

Yeah, todd actually tracks it and talks about the sat contributions to the media show every episode. So we actually have the same type of segment in our show where we talk and thank our listeners for contributing the sats.

James Cridland: 1:04:20

Yeah, so it's a really good, really interesting tool as well. Conchacsapp is, I believe, where you can get some more information there as well, which pulls a bunch of data out there, if you do get value from what we do. The Podneas Weekly Review. This show is separate from PodNews. It's a trademark license, if you must know, sam, and I share everything from it. We really appreciate your support so we can continue making this show. You can become a power supporter with fiat money, with dollars, with pounds, with Aussie dollars, if you must, at weeklypodnewsnet. Or you can support us with sats by hitting the boost button in your podcast app. If you don't have one, podnewsnet slash new podcast apps will help you finda new app. Two recommendations I will give you. One of them is Fountain, for whom I'm an advisor, but it's a very good app and they've fixed some of the bugs that made me quite annoyed with it, which is nice. And the other one is, of course, podfansfm, which you should go and have a play with. So what's been happening for you this week, rob?

Rob Greenlee: 1:05:18

Well, like I had mentioned just a few minutes ago, I got a confirmation that I'll be moderating a paddle at podcast movement in Denver on August 22nd at 3.45 pm Mountain Standard Time, and the topic is going to be narrowing your niche, carving your space in the podcasting landscape. So I'm excited for that. That's part of the Quill podcast platform. It's sponsoring, I guess, like nine panels at podcast movement, so that's just going to be one of them.

James Cridland: 1:05:51

Yes, indeed, and they're sponsoring yeah, they're sponsoring a panel that I'm doing as well. I would tell you what it's called and all of that information, but that would involve me being a little bit more obvious than I am this morning, so we won't be doing that, but still. But there we are, yeah, so I'm looking forward to being part of that part of that as well, and looking forward to being there through the entire conference as well. If you are working on a panel or a session and you have a lack of middle-aged white people, then white men, then I am there ready and waiting for you. I can't imagine that that will ever happen, but nevertheless it's worthwhile.

James Cridland: 1:06:33

Worthwhile giving it a go. Yeah, and I've put my name forward for one of the new podcasting sessions which is on the first day, which Capsivator looking after, and so I've said I'm perfectly happy to help with that as well. So we'll see what happens there. And now, is it a podcast or is it not a podcast? Your trust factor show Well it's actually a YouTube show. Is that a podcast?

Rob Greenlee: 1:07:09

That's a hot debate right now, james, is it a podcast? Or not, but it does have. Don't beat me, todd Cochran, I do take the audio from that show and put it out on a podcast feed off a speaker. So this week's episode, the topic was distrust of coming AI surveillance. Yeah, very nice, like get into the weeds.

James Cridland: 1:07:31

Yeah, ai surveillance Wow, there's a thing, and so you've been talking with a lot of different podcast hosts to understand what the differences are between the different podcast hosts and everything else, so that you, as a independent consultant, can actually talk to people about which different podcast hosting companies they should be using. So you're hosting this particular one on Spreaker.

Rob Greenlee: 1:07:53

On Spreaker right and the other show that I'm doing I'm hosting on Lipson, and so I'm kind of spreading it around a little bit, both companies I used to work for, so it's one of those things. But, yeah, I have talked to, like, the megaphone platform, I've talked to Buzzsprout. Obviously, I know Podbean, and so those are all platforms that, yeah, I've been trying to gather a better understanding. I mean, it was difficult back when I was working for each one of these platforms because I couldn't really learn that much about the other platforms unless I created a stealthy show over there or something like that. So that's what's been fun over the last few months, of being able to really dig in and learn about a bunch of the podcasting platforms, and it's been interesting to find out, you know, like iHeart Radio, and how they're building stuff and things like that.

James Cridland: 1:08:45

Yeah, there's a lot of work in this particular area and I think it's exciting now that we're seeing some innovation in the space, both in terms of the new podcast name space, but also in terms of just new and additional tools that people are using and captivate who. I was once an advisor for a long, long time ago, but before they were bought by Global. They have all kinds of entertaining, clever tools that they have built into their platform now so that that will sort out calendar bookings and sort out pre-production notes and all kinds of information. So, yeah, it's a really interesting time, I think.

Rob Greenlee: 1:09:25

Yeah, it's interesting, though, that there's only a couple of podcast hosts that have really done any kind of integrations with AI platforms yet. So it's interesting. You know, while we've seen this explosion of alternative independent platforms that are doing various things with AI in the podcasting space, they're all not most of them are not connected up with any of the hosts, which is kind of an interesting development, or lack of development, I guess.

James Cridland: 1:09:52

Yeah, no, absolutely, and I think one of the people that's bucking that trend is our sponsor, buzzsprout, which has co-host AI, which is very clever, and you can read what it's made of this particular show in the show notes, because all of that, apart from any glaring errors, all come from the Buzzsprout co-host service, which seems to do quite a smart job, I think, for me this week. What have I been doing? This week? I have been basically being at home trying to get rid of this cold and, yeah, and just doing a little bit of planning.

James Cridland: 1:10:29

I've been buying flights for London in September for Pod News Live, looking at November, the end of November for Mexico City, which should be great. For another, there's a Pod News event going on there with our friends at RSScom, so that should be great fun to play around with. So, yeah, so I've basically been doing that, but thankfully not traveling anywhere particularly soon. I think. My next flight is over to Denver, a place where I've never been. I've never been to Colorado. It's going to be a whole new experience. I'm going to see the airport and the conference hotel and the airport.

Rob Greenlee: 1:11:13

So that's usually what happens at podcast, but I know I'm a. I got picked to be a speaker at another event that's going on in Philadelphia. It's called the IndiePodCon. It's at IndiePodConcom, so that's going on on September 9th down there. It's been an annual event that's been going on in the Philadelphia area for many, many years, so it's been around a while.

James Cridland: 1:11:39

Yeah, very nice, very nice it's fun.

Rob Greenlee: 1:11:41

And then there's Podfest coming up in January.

James Cridland: 1:11:44

Indeed, yes, which, who knows? I might. I might make it too, I might not. It's a long way to go. It is a long way to go, and it is, and it is Florida, it is. They're weird down there, aren't they? Yes, it's extremely hot down there, James. Yes, that's clearly. That's clearly what I meant. So thank you. So thank you for joining us, Rob. That's very kind, and that's it for this week.

Rob Greenlee: 1:12:14

You can certainly give feedback to James and Sam by using their email address weekly at podnewsnet or send them a booster gram. If your particular podcast app doesn't support Boost, then grab a new app at podnewsnet, forward, slash new podcast apps and maybe try Podfans or sign up for his alpha.

James Cridland: 1:12:36

Right, yeah, that would be a wise and generous move. Our music is from Studio Dragonfly, our voiceover is Sheila D and we're hosted and sponsored by PodNews Live and Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy. Thank you, rob. Thank you.

Sheila Dee: 1:12:51

Get updated every day. 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.