James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 6th of October 2023.

Speaker 2: 0:04

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

Sam Sethi: 0:12

I'm James Cridlin, the editor of Pod News and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of Podfans.

James Cridland: 0:17

In the chapters. Today, audiobooks are coming to Spotify. Canada's CRTC moves into regulating podcasts. Google goes out on a high. Adam Curry earns a Lifetime Achievement Award as well. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout. Last week, 3,347 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with powerful tools, free learning materials and remarkable customer support. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review. Well, sam, let me just tell you, just before we start, how tired am I? I?

Sam Sethi: 0:56

think I can tell James what's caused it. What's caused it?

James Cridland: 1:00

Yes, I mean anything. Anybody would think that I've been spending a rather lost of time on airplanes, particularly since Qantas didn't bother to actually, you know, put my airplane back on time. So I've had lots of delays and oh dear but still. But you've had fun. You ended up going to the British Podcast Awards. I noticed at the end of last week. How was that?

Sam Sethi: 1:26

It was great. Yeah, thank you very much for going to Greece and leaving me to do the British Podcast Awards. I had a lot of fun actually. Yes, got to, got to go on stage, meet a few people. I basically said when I handed out my award, I was very upset because it wasn't to the news agents, it was to the Guardian and I wanted a photo with Emily Matlis. So, very kindly, emily Matlis came and took a photo with me. So it was very happy, that's excellent.

James Cridland: 1:54

Very good, but you ended up handing the award out to the folks at the Guardian the Today in Focus podcast. Funnily enough, I was speaking the very next day with someone from the Guardian's podcast division who didn't know that they had ended up winning, so I was able to break it to them and they were delighted, so that was good.

Sam Sethi: 2:15

Yeah, what can I just say? Thank you to you as well for not being there. I got to the front page of the Guardian. So, yes, that was the photo on the front page of the Guardian.

James Cridland: 2:24

Wow, there you go On the front page of the printed version or just the front page of the website. Both, I believe. Both. Yes, really yes. There you go, see if I can dig out a copy of the printed version and take a peek at that. Podcast of the Year went to a positive life HIV from Terrence Higgins to Today. It's a great podcast from BBC Radio Wales, hosted by singer-songwriter Sam Smith. So that's all good. And we get our chance to enjoy the Glitz and the Glamour with the Australian Podcast Awards, which is also operated by the same lot, haymarket. They announced that the awards will be at the Soffertale Sydney Darling Harbour on November the 21st, so that should be all good.

Sam Sethi: 3:09

Well, I won't be there for that. But I can tell you, james, I'm coming down in February. So there you go. There you go. I'm coming down, coming where in February? Australia, where in Australia? Well, sydney to begin with, but I will try and make it down to where you are, where are you again?

James Cridland: 3:24

Tell everyone, I should, I should Brisbane. And when you say make it down, you mean up.

Sam Sethi: 3:29

Oh, ok, I'm coming to Sydney, I should. I should really look at my map before I get to you, then should I.

James Cridland: 3:34

Yes, that would be a good idea, wouldn't it? Shall we move on to Spotify. Spotify, they're the future, aren't they?

Sam Sethi: 3:41

Well, actually, you know a couple of things they've done this week, I think you know I've got to tip a hat to them really. I mean, I do knock them for being proprietary, but sometimes they do a few good things. And they've offered 15 hours of free listening to premium users both in the UK and Australia. So we can share a book, james, if you'd like. We can listen per month and it's rolling out to the US later in the winter, so that was an announcement they made yesterday, james, what do you think?

James Cridland: 4:09

Yes, it's quite interesting. And premium users and by premium users they mean the people who pay you the bill, by the way, but premium users will get 15 hours of audiobook listening per month with their plan, and why don't? Why I say listeners who pay their bill. If you're on the family plan but you're not the owner of the family plan, you don't get it. So really, yeah, excellent.

Sam Sethi: 4:34

Yes.

James Cridland: 4:34

Finally, finally, finally, you get recognized for paying the bill for your entire family. Yes, so yes, you can. You can choose from 150,000 audiobook titles. Now that to me didn't sound like an awful lot, but what's what, if I have said, is 70 percent of those I think it's 70 percent of the top rated audiobooks out there are available on this plan, so actually that's a pretty good number. And yeah, and I'm always a particular fan of something that is available in the UK and Australia and not yet available in the US. That's always a good thing. I wonder why that might be. I wonder whether they haven't actually sorted out the licenses yet with the US organizations. Who knows, maybe they just don't like reading books in America.

Sam Sethi: 5:27

I don't know.

James Cridland: 5:28

Maybe, maybe that's a plan. I doubt it. I should disclose that Spotify is the sponsor for pod news this month, not that that should change any of the editorial that we have. Spotify is also to add time synced transcripts for more podcasts on the platform, according to the company. So it doesn't look as if it's transcripts for everything. It just looks as if it's transcripts for more shows that they have made or that they like. From what I can work out, it's a proprietary tool. Obviously they're not using any of the podcasting 2.0 stuff. They also have a chapters feature, which again is a proprietary tool, which is not one of the podcasting 2.0 things either. So you know, there is always that, I suppose. Have you I mean I was going to say, have you taken an interest in that, sam? I guess it's relatively you know, relatively useless for you, I suppose.

Sam Sethi: 6:24

Well it is, but I did take an interest. Look, you can play two hats. One I can say as a supporter of the podcast index and the open standards oh my God, spotify, why can't you just get on board and do it properly? But on the other hand, they have a mass market adoption of listeners and users and if those people can get to see that there is the option to listen to a transcript and there is the option to listen to chapters and jump forward or go to a certain section, again it's educating the market and maybe that's what we can use Spotify for Build proprietary tools to educate the market. But then when they want to get a version that works across multiple platforms or a better version, maybe then that gives us the opportunity.

Sam Sethi: 7:10

Again, I think I said it on Mark Haskell's podcast, you know he asked me you know what's wrong with podcasting apps? I said nothing, but people don't know there is a problem because they don't see any feature missing. So now, adding these features into Spotify, people go oh, I never knew. Yeah, I always wanted to jump to chapters or I always wanted to have the transcript as I listen to the podcast.

James Cridland: 7:33

I don't know.

Sam Sethi: 7:33

I think that there is positives to what they're doing, even if it is proprietary.

James Cridland: 7:38

That's an interesting way of thinking about it. Certainly, Do you think that they've announced lots of AI voice cloning as well? Do you think that that will drive others into the market there too?

Sam Sethi: 7:50

I think so, again, looking at what they've done, they're dipping their toes into this, aren't they? They've done a really good job. When you listen to it, it does sound like Steven Bartlett in a Spanish accent. It doesn't sound like you know faulty towers. It does sound very good and I think, again, can they extend that to some? Maybe your eye, you know, with the tool, actually work if we were doing it in Spanish? Or is it just going to be a studio system that actually takes hours of work to translate, so it has that inclination and tone of the actual original speaker? I don't know what the technology is. They're using open AI. So, again, I assume lots of other people could do this. I don't know.

James Cridland: 8:34

Yeah, I guess so I mean there are a number of different companies also doing this as well. I mean, the idea is that they're going to clone the voice of podcast hosts into different languages, as you say. So there was an announcement from a company called WonderCraft AI who have launched an AI dubbing tool. It's available to all podcasts, they say, in 13 different languages, but it doesn't clone your voice. So this is the podcast daily as cloned into Spanish by the WonderCraft tool. It's a podcast ranking for Augusto.

James Cridland: 9:12

El listener de SSA ahora tiene más de 8 millones de oyentes mensuales y la red i-heart de IRN Australia es el editor de podcast número uno en 40 rankings consecutivos.

James Cridland: 9:23

No, that clearly not me, but nevertheless that's what I wrote, but translated into Spanish. So that's pretty good, and there's been other companies like this in the past. So very tone voice ended up cloning my voice about two or so years ago and that sounded pretty good. It sounded a little bit like this Gracias a una nueva tecnología inteligente, los podcasts podrían estar disponibles en varios idiomas, which is all very nice, and there seems to be lots of companies doing it. So only on Wednesday, podcast one announced that it's going to produce Spanish language translations for its library of podcasts using something that I've never heard of before RASC, ai, rask, who are apparently a leading AI video localization and dubbing tool. They are translating Bad Bad Thing, which is a true crime show from Barbara Schroeder. So you know, I guess there's going to be an awful lot of these tools, and it'll be interesting to see which ones work and which ones don't.

Sam Sethi: 10:31

I can't wait to hear you speak Hindi. I can't wait to hear me speak Hindi. That would be even funnier. But yes, I don't know. I think this is good. I mean, I don't think the number of people who are going to be listening to a translated version is going to be high, but it does open the opportunity for us. I often sit with my wife watching subtitled films and I go oh frustrating. She loves it. I hate it, right, and maybe because I'm double screening and I can't be bothered to listen to the subtitles. That's probably the truth, but I think this is a great way. It opens up content that we probably wouldn't get. You know that I wouldn't probably listen to because I don't speak many languages or any languages. So again, I think it's great. I don't think many people are going to do it, but it's great.

James Cridland: 11:22

And I'm curious as to why we're not seeing companies using this AI technology to translate stuff into English, and I wonder how much of a second fiddle you feel if the only content is being made for you by AI tools being translated into your language rather than in English. It's a peculiar sort of it makes it feel as if English is the number one language and everything else should just follow English, and I'm not so sure that I necessarily agree with that.

Sam Sethi: 11:59

It has been the dominant one in podcasting America. The UK markets are the biggest two so far, so I guess that's why it leads out on English. Maybe, as the markets evolve into other languages, spanish probably could overtake it. You never know. That's certainly a massive market, certainly as in music, as we know.

James Cridland: 12:19

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's certainly worthwhile keeping an eye on, as is worthwhile keeping an eye on the Spotify for podcasters, the artist formerly known as Anker, which saw an increase in market share by episode according to live wise data for the last month. The data does sort of have this weird thing in there John Spurlock saying that it has improved accuracy, and I asked what's the improved accuracy? And he says, well, it's more accurate, which is necessarily answering the question. So I don't really know what the improvements are there and I'm a little bit sort of dubious about somebody all of a sudden changing the rules, and that's apparently what's happened here. But anyway, spotify for podcasters seemingly a really large market share, and what that also means is that there's various changes in terms of the amount of trackers and things like that. So that's one sort of side of that. But Spotify for podcasters seemingly doing very well.

James Cridland: 13:22

Buzzsprout seeing a drop for both Apple podcasts and Spotify, though on their latest global stats page for August, google podcasts, of course, posting its best ever download share 3.5% on the platform, just in time for it to close. Well, of course, it'll be closing next year. Wouldn't it be funny if we could get it up to 10%? Really, really entertaining, but still. But yes. So not quite sure what's going on there with the Buzzsprout numbers, but you know, it's always, always interesting to see where people are getting their shows. Who knows, they might be getting them from the new YouTube integrations later on in the year. I guess those are rolled out.

Sam Sethi: 14:08

Now moving across the world a little bit. Canada Now, the country I thought they were really. I always called Canadians, just the nice Americans, really. That's how I always look at them, but they are very draconian in the way that they deal with media. James, they seem to be doing this with podcasts now what's going on?

James Cridland: 14:26

Yeah, they are the CRTC, which is the Canadian equivalent of Ofcom or the FCC. It's the media regulator and they are. Well, it's not quite clear what they're doing. They're moving into regulation of podcasts in some way, shape or form. So the new rules are there to ensure online streaming services make meaningful contributions to Canadian and indigenous content. They're requiring that all online services with more than $10 million Canadian in revenue that operate in Canada and offer podcasts should register with the government, and one presumes that it's registered with the government so that the government can tell them what they should be focusing and featuring on.

James Cridland: 15:14

I asked the CRTC who is supposed to register? Am I supposed to register, or what's your definition of online streaming service? And they have come back to me and they've said that it's online services that operate in Canada and offer podcasts, such as Apple and Spotify, which is interesting because Apple don't make podcasts of their own, spotify do, so is this a conversation around content or is this a conversation around the platforms? I still don't really know. What they have said is the CRTC will not censor content Canadians listen to and watch online. You'll be able to continue to listen and watch the content of your choice. The goal is to better support Canadian and indigenous content and ensure it is available on radio, tv and online streaming services.

James Cridland: 16:08

So, yes, not quite sure what's going on there. The one thing that I would say is, given my experience with the Canadian radio industry, the CRTC is the worst thing to happen to the radio industry in Canada. It's stuck in 1976, when it first started, and I think it's just a bad. Bad thing for Canadians. If the CRTC is wading into trying to regulate podcasts, they're not rising all ships by doing this. They're basically draining the harbour from my point of view. So I don't think it's a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 16:43

But still there you go. Yeah, it feels like somebody's gone. We've got to get more content from Canada in. Right, we're going to regulate, regulate, regulate and put quotas.

James Cridland: 16:53

Yes, I mean, I had a nice email from a nice Canadian saying I don't think you understand how small our country is and how, in terms of population, and how big our country is in terms of land mass and how complicated it is to cover our entire country, and I said hello from Australia. Yes, I do, I know exactly what it's like so yes, but still.

James Cridland: 17:22

But anyway, there is good news out of Canada, which is that Quill friend of the show, fatima Quill have been recognised as one of Canada's fastest growing companies, which is always good, so hurrah.

Sam Sethi: 17:37

Now, while we were away or you were away, I was just in the home country myself, but you came over, you came back. Ashley Kalman was reporting that podcasts are faking their numbers for bigger paychecks. Naughty, naughty, naughty. Why are they doing?

James Cridland: 17:51

this, james Naughty, naughty, naughty. Well, yes, indeed, I think this was. So this was a closed door session run, I think, by Libsyn at podcast movement. It's one of those, one of those super secret meetings that you're not allowed to know about. Not quite sure what the output of it was, but it's basically podcasters apparently trying to fake their numbers.

James Cridland: 18:17

Now what I would say is that really, at the end of the day, if you are an advertiser on a podcast not a sponsor like Buzz Brown, but an actual advertiser then your ads will be served by vast tags. So you already know what the numbers are. You know what the numbers you're getting are. You don't? You know? A podcaster can turn around and say I had 200 million downloads, and you can point out no, you only had a million, because my ad is served on my own thing.

James Cridland: 18:49

So I don't really understand what's in it for podcasters to fake their numbers Because, as I say, in most cases it's going to be DAI driven, it's going to be done, done through this vast tag, and it won't be. It won't be an issue. But clearly there are people who are trying to pretend that they're doing bigger numbers than they currently are. You know, op3 is a good answer to that. If you want to trust the numbers that you're getting from a podcaster, then ask them to register with OP3. Make sure that we can all see those numbers, because that's the only way of keeping this particular industry honest.

James Cridland: 19:28

I would have thought so. Why those numbers aren't published? I don't know. The other sort of side of it is that if Libsyn wanted to, libsyn could have open published pages for their shows if they wanted to. That would automatically be available to everybody. It's what Captivate does, it's what Blueberry does. It could be something that Libsyn do as well. So I think there are plenty of answers to this, but I'm not sure that I actually see what the issues are here. What do you think, sam?

Sam Sethi: 20:04

Well, I think it's historical. I think, when you've got an industry that measures based on downloads and then qualification to access advertising packages become based on your download numbers, I think some podcasters may fake it. I don't, as you said, I think it's very quick, they'll get found out. So I don't see what's the value in it. But a friend of mine, james Bishop, was asking me yesterday why do we have download numbers? Can we not have, you know, listen time, percent completed, etc. What bump has been pushing forward A metric of attention, when streaming is probably a better way of doing it, where, again, all hosts must have this data. They must know when a podcast is served and played and how long. So I don't know why they don't publish this data.

James Cridland: 20:56

Well, podcast hosts don't know how long someone listens. The only thing that they know is from a download number how many are downloaded. But we do know how long people listen in apps like Apple and Spotify and those aren't all of the platforms, but there again, we are trying to get more of that data. If you remember the old days of NPR and RAD, you know they had this magic plan where they were hoping that more podcast apps would put code in them and everybody went, oh my God, you're spying on us, which of course, wasn't really the plan, and that died quite a fast death. So not quite sure whether or not there's going to be anything like that in the future. But yeah, I mean I would be far more interested in seeing total time spent listened rather than just raw reach numbers. I don't think that those are particularly helpful anymore.

James Cridland: 21:56

So, yeah, it'd be interesting to end up here, but I think the narrative from this story and from others is that podcast stats are bad, and I don't think that that's a fair narrative. I think that the stats that we have from podcasting is pretty good, and it's not the fault of RSS. It's the fault of the fact that it's an open ecosystem that anybody can make a podcast app. You know out there and I don't think that that's necessarily an issue. So yeah, I'm just sort of a little bit wary of stories which are basically trying to get over the narrative that nobody knows what people are listening to on their podcasts. I don't necessarily buy into that, to be honest.

Sam Sethi: 22:43

Moving on, adam Bowie, friend of the show, has written a long, data rich look into the future for podcasts using YouTube. What was he saying, james?

James Cridland: 22:53

Oh, he's saying loads of things. So Adam is a. I don't think he likes it when I call him a radio research veteran. So let's not call him a veteran. Which bit doesn't he?

Sam Sethi: 23:04

like James, I'm sure it's a veteran. Yes, because I don't think he cares about the first part of that sentence.

James Cridland: 23:11

Yes, I think it's basically that, but yes, so he has written a very good long form article all about podcasting on YouTube, whether or not it works, whether or not it's a good idea, what a podcast is, all of that stuff and wrote a little bit about Edison podcast metrics as well, which is useful, but there's some really good examples in there of good visualised podcasts and podcasts which aren't necessarily good and visualised, and how YouTube might actually work on that and some of the worries that we might have with YouTube in the future. So it's well worth a read. You can find it linked from the Pod News website, of course.

Sam Sethi: 23:53

Yeah, he's a very clever man, Mr Bowie. Indeed. Now, James, you're tired, aren't you? I can tell You've been on flights. Yes, that's mainly because you came to London. What were you doing in London, James?

James Cridland: 24:07

Well, I mean, obviously I came to London for Pod News Live, which was a great success. Lots of really positive comments from all of the people that went. So, thank you to you if you went and yes, it was a good event. I thought you laid on a very excellent venue in Soho House in London West 12, which was, yes, it was all very good.

Sam Sethi: 24:33

I'd like to say, because I missed the opportunity, I'd like to say we did a very good job, james, because you are part of the same crew. So, yes, hats off to you as well, sir. So I enjoyed the day. I think the pace of the day went really well. I mean, based on feedback, everyone said that they took a lot away from the day. So, yeah, all we can say is that you know, it was a great event, but we won't be doing any more. But thank you very much.

James Cridland: 25:01

Yes, not doing any more of those Wow gosh, but yes, so it was super good seeing so many people, so that was definitely a good thing. I then went to Greece, spoke at a conference in Athens. I had a very good text message from a mate of mine who said that Athens it's a bit like Nairobi, but they've tidied it up a bit, which I thought was to be fair, relatively accurate. Quite a lot of the bits that I went to. Gosh, they like their graffiti in Athens, I'll tell you, oh dear, you kind of forget, although you don't forget that the country has gone bust quite a few times over the last 30 years or so. It's, yes, it's gosh, it's definitely a place, but the event was very, very comfortable. It was a very good event, one of these events that was being held in a disused and, frankly, quite derelict factory in the middle of one of the industrial areas of Athens, and it was all journalists very eagerly talking about how important journalism is. So, yes, it was a good thing. Very, very hot, very, very humid.

Sam Sethi: 26:25

Well, at least you're warm, james, and you're used to it. We're freezing already in the UK. That's all I can tell you. It's not even well. It is October.

James Cridland: 26:34

I suppose, and it's already quite warm here. So there's a thing talking about Australia. Let's go around the world and the Australian podcast awards sharing the current top 20 for the listener's choice vote. There's still time to vote for your favourite. Who's in that top 20? Yes, lots of shows that I don't recognise Frank, Tony and Ryan. They're very good. They're on Spotify. Tony Martin's Sizzletown is a veteran in winning these awards. That show seems to have done particularly well, and there's lots of other ones, including the Alpha Blokes podcast. That sounds diverse, Live on Cart, Shameless. There's all kinds of stuff. So still time for you to vote. I believe. Feel favourite at AustralianPodcastAwardscom.

Sam Sethi: 27:26

Now moving around to Italy. The Italian podcast audience continues to grow. According to Ipsos, 39% of 16 to 60 euros. It's such a widespread that I often think. And now listening to podcasts? Monthly, that's about 11.9 million people. So congratulations, italy is growing.

James Cridland: 27:46

Yes, although they're listening to less, the whole, 57% say that they listen to the whole length of each episode. That figure last year was 58%. So they're listening slightly less, mostly listening at home, mostly listening on mobile phones no surprise they're. 78% say that they can recall podcast advertising that they have heard. No surprise there. And 79% are multitasking they're doing other things while they listen, so no real surprise there either. They interviewed 2,300 people, so, yeah, it's always nice to see data from Italy.

Sam Sethi: 28:27

And going over to Nigeria, a survey into podcasts listening suggests that 35% of Nigerians listen to podcasts Multiple times a week. But actually Spotify put out some more interesting figures. They said in Nigeria it's increasing by 222% in listenership between 2021 and 2022.

James Cridland: 28:49

Yes, very interesting data from Spotify, and I think Spotify released a ton of data for much of Africa, much of different African countries. They didn't release any of it to me, but they have been filling the press with that, so definitely worthwhile having a peek at. Listeners tune in the most between 7 and 9 in the morning in Nigeria, possibly because they're commuting to work, perhaps, who knows? And Gen Z listeners, aged 18 to 24, account for 50% of the total streams over the last three months. They're talking about streams, of course, because that's how Spotify works. So, yes, data from Spotify, from Africa, always good.

Sam Sethi: 29:35

Yeah, they covered Japan, brazil, india and a few other countries as well. So the overall theme, though, of that report, unsurprisingly, was that the numbers are increasing dramatically for the amount of listeners Well, which is a good thing.

James Cridland: 29:53

People news let's take a look at that. Ruth Fitzsimons she is a blast from the past. She used to be very senior at Audio Boom. Then she went to be managing director of PodFront UK, which was Stitcher and Wondery working together in the UK. Now, after a little gap, she is working at VoiceWorks it's been announced as head of international. So VoiceWorks and Sports Social Podcast Network is a big podcaster in Salford In Manchester and backed by Communicorp, a very good large company. So good to see Ruth starting to work there.

James Cridland: 30:35

There's a couple of other hires at VoiceWorks as well. Zach Levitt has joined Ballon Studios, his head of production. He used to work at Cadence 13. Rob Byers he worked at APM American Public Media. He has wrapped up a first month as director of Audio at Voice Media, which is good. Pushkin Industries is to make 17 employees redundant, which isn't great. That's 13% of their workforce. Meanwhile, the New York Times says that WNYC is to cut its workforce by roughly 40 people. That's 12% of the workforce there. So clearly changes still going on in big media. Many congratulations to Mitch Downey, who is the developer of Podverse, which is a very good podcast app. Thanks for watching and Mitch has quit his day job and will be working on that app full time for the next three months, working off his savings. So many congratulations, mitch. That's an exciting time, so I hope you get down and do some properly, properly exciting coding for that.

Sam Sethi: 31:49

Yeah, no, it's a great app and, you know, considering he's been doing it part time, he'll be excited to see what he delivers in this next three months.

James Cridland: 31:57

Yeah, no, that should be. That should be really good, and I'm sure that a lot of that is going to be tech debt that he needs to fix, which is usually the way, isn't it? But I'm sure that we'll see some new stuff as well. If you're looking for a job, pod News has podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world on podcasting's largest jobs board. They're free to post. It just takes two minutes. Podnewsnet slash jobs. The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 32:24

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter, and here's where we do all of the tech talk. There's a new microphone, sam. Are you going to be buying it?

Sam Sethi: 32:34

No, I've got enough hanging around here in the background, don't need more. I mean, the shore's lovely, that's the one you use. But this is the new shore SM7DB notoriously quiet microphone, and now this comes with a pre-built amp in it.

James Cridland: 32:48

Yes, which is overcoming the big problem that most people had with that particular microphone. So good to see them launch that. Albi has highlighted its relationship with Pod fans, isn't that you?

Sam Sethi: 33:03

Who they, who they? Yeah, no, we've waited until now. Obviously, we've been working with Albi for the best part of a year, maybe more and Moritz and the guys there, boomi, have been saying, look, when can we talk about our relationship? And I said, look, can you hold out? Hold out until we've got it a product that I feel comfortable with. So we launched the beta last week. I feel very good about that. We've added push notifications and it's an installed PWA and it supports all the new badges API, so very happy. Yeah, I mean, it's not perfect and we've still got a lot more work to do. That's why it's a beta, but yeah, it's a good place to start. So they've talked about what we do with Albi, which is nice of them, yeah, which is very good.

James Cridland: 33:50

You'll find that on the Albi blog and news about things growing. Basically, the open transcript standard in RSS is now being used by 963,000 episodes, nearly hitting 1 million, which is nice to end up seeing, Although actually those stats don't appear very high. In terms of podcasts using it, there appear to be very many, what I would call very many shows using transcripts. It's about 36,000. And I'm there thinking surely we should be a little bit higher than that by now. And I wonder how many of those are automated transcripts from people like Buzzsprout or from RSScom who are sticking them in as well. I don't know, but yeah. So I kind of looked at that and I thought the episode number is big, nearly hitting 1 million. Who knows, it might have hit 1 million by the time this show goes out, but certainly the number of shows is seemingly relatively small. But yeah, I don't know.

Sam Sethi: 34:56

So why? I go back to the comment I made about Spotify earlier. It's good that they're adding transcripts to more shows, because people are then going to go oh, you can get transcripts, can you with podcasts? Yes, she can, and then they'll demand it in other places or from other podcasters.

James Cridland: 35:11

Yes, no, indeed, indeed, and OP3 is now measuring more than 900 shows, which is good, Of course. It's a free podcast analytics tool mentioned earlier, puts your data in the open. Also puts its own code in the open for 100% trustworthy analytics. It's well worth giving it a look If you are a podcaster. If you're not, why on earth are you listening? Op3.dev is the place to go, and the last thing that I spotted was something that I thought was quite interesting but very geeky how to detect failed requests via web extensions.

James Cridland: 35:47

Typically, your typically your browser doesn't always, isn't always very good at checking whether or not you could actually download that file or play that audio or anything else, and so there's a piece of work that has been done which helps you work out what your browser is actually doing and whether or not your browser has actually managed to connect correctly to something particularly useful. So I run a, an ad blocking DNS server, and so sometimes things don't work as I'm expecting them to work, because the connection hasn't, you know, has been marked off as as a spammy connection or advertising or something, and so sometimes things don't actually work. And, yeah, you can see that this might be a useful thing. So, anyway, linked to it in Tuesday's edition of the new of the newsletter, but might be interesting to you know other people who are working on particularly web apps and an embedded players.

Sam Sethi: 36:54

Yeah we had a look at that one, James. Thank you very much for the hot tip there.

James Cridland: 36:58

It's a great pleasure. Let's talk, let's talk awards shall we Now?

Sam Sethi: 37:04

the winners of the black podcasting awards were announced in New York. Black loving who's founder and CEO, cody Elaine Oliver, won six separate awards. Our list, which was in a pod news daily, includes publishers and hosting companies. Sounds like a very good awards.

James Cridland: 37:20

It does. Yes, that was. That was just ahead of International Podcasting Day, although they didn't necessarily share the winners for a few days, but, yeah, really good to see a ton of a ton of awards, and it's also really good to see who's hosting all of these, where they're being made by you know who's making them and everything else. So, yeah, it was a good list of shows, so that was nice. There's a bunch of other entertaining awards that have happened Dave Jackson, friend of the show, listener to the show because I see his streaming sats coming through every single week. He won the 2023 podcast influencer of the year, which is all very exciting. Was that at the Spark Media Awards? I have a feeling it was, wasn't it?

Sam Sethi: 38:10

Yeah, and again, congratulations Dave. He does a lot of hard work in the industry to educate people, so yeah, well deserved. There was another award for somebody as well. That was well deserved. Who was that, james?

James Cridland: 38:24

That was Adam Curry the one and only Adam Curry. This prestigious award honoured Adam Curry, a luminary whose lifetime of work has made an indelible impact on the media, entertainment and podcast landscape Luminary. So I congratulated Adam on this earlier and he said I've got plenty more to plan in my lifetime, so it's good.

Sam Sethi: 38:54

Yeah, he's not putting his feet up quite yet. He's not retiring.

James Cridland: 38:57

So many congratulations to him. That was a very good thing. And the People's Choice Podcast Award the Audacity to Podcast won that. Daniel J Lewis very excited with all of that. So, yes, I entered once, I didn't go anywhere, I didn't bother again. Still, there we go. So congratulations.

James Cridland: 39:24

Daniel for winning in the People's Choice Podcast Awards, and you just reminded me to go and take a look at the rest of those winners. So many congratulations to you if you ended up winning something there and in terms of awards that you can go and enter. There's the Independent Podcast Awards in October in the UK. Podfest Berlin is happening as an event that you can go to in October in Berlin as well, the Afros and Audio Podcast Festival in Baltimore A lovely place, october 21st.

James Cridland: 40:00

The schedule for the Paris Podcast Festival is now online. That is October the 13th to the 14th Who'd have thought it it's in Paris and a few other in November. One, the Cheerful Earful, which is a comedy festival, is taking place in London, and Podcon MX, which has been announced for Mexico City on November the 9th. It's presented by rsscom and I will be there, looking forward to being there as well. 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, tell the world about it. It's free to be listed at podnewsnet. Boostergram corner, corner, corner on the pod news weekly review.

James Cridland: 40:49

It's our favorite time of the week, sam. It's where people send us boosts, sometimes asking questions, sometimes criticizing, sometimes not. And what have we got for this?

Sam Sethi: 40:58

week, we'll take it all. We'll take it all. Pay me, pay me and I'll take anything, don't worry about it. This week we've got the old podcast Wondering where my qr code on pod news will go for Android phones once Google podcast shut down. James, where's it going?

James Cridland: 41:14

to go? That's a good question from the optimal living daily podcast. Thank you, justin. A good question? Not quite sure yet. As you will know, the the pod news website is peppered with google podcast links, because the google podcast link works on Absolutely any android phone. You don't even have to have the google podcasts player, um it just, it just works on any particular android phone. Um, I'm assuming that because youtube music is now a must install, I'm assuming that it will be a good idea to get um some sort of hook into youtube music. Um, that, of course, assumes that there will be a way of doing that. Um, and I'm not quite sure how that works yet. Otherwise, I'm a bit stuck because there isn't a standard podcast player on the android device anymore, so Um not quite sure where that should go. If anybody knows where I should be Appointing a qr code to me, I mean maybe it should go to a A pwa that works everywhere. Um, maybe that would work. Yes, maybe it should work. Maybe it should go to go to pod fans.

Sam Sethi: 42:25

Who knows? Who knows? Well, if in doubt, maybe it's a fallback for you, james, there's a fallback for you.

James Cridland: 42:32

There you go. Well, maybe, maybe that's the plan, maybe that's the plan. Um, and the pod news weekly review is separate from the main pod news newsletter, sam, and I share everything from it. Um, and uh, any support goes to deferring the costs of pod news live. Um, we really appreciate your support so that we can continue making this show. We do actually keep some of it back for other things. You can become a power supporter with your credit card if you wish. You can go to weekly dot pod news dot net. Or you can support us with sats by hitting the boost button in your podcast app. And if you don't have a boost button, uh, then go to pod news dot net. Slash new podcast apps. And we always forget to say thank you to the many people who are paid subscribers. Um, so thank you to dan Lopez, to dav jones, to matt madeiros, marshal brown, cameron moll and kevin fin, uh, for your kind uh support for the last eight months, most of you. So thank you so much indeed. Now, what's happened for you this week, sam Well?

Sam Sethi: 43:38

apart from flouncing around, the british podcast was, which I did. I tell you what's really weird, james. Right, talk about pasta syndrome. There was all these famous people going up a stage and then there was me to hand out one award, which is very funny, but afterwards A whole host of random people felt that they could now come up to me and just talk to me and say, oh, you did very well on stage there. Thank you very much, very nice to meet you, and I was like I thought, wow, it's very weird, isn't it, once you get your face known. Um, but yes, uh, I also met the brown girls. Do it? The um, uh, british podcast award winners for the last couple of years? Um, very nice, um, and yeah, a whole host of other people were there, so it was good fun to do. So thank you for not being there, james, and letting me do it on your behalf.

James Cridland: 44:24

You'll be there anyway, but yes, uh well, thank you, thank you for doing it and, uh, much appreciated. If you want to Get an idea of what the event was all about, then the media podcast is with matt deegan and that has a special episode from the british podcast awards. You'll hear from the winners. You get a feel from the event as well. If you want to hear Lots of fancy british voices, then that's worthwhile hunting out the media podcast with matt deegan.

Sam Sethi: 44:50

So the other thing I'll be doing this week Came out yesterday is an interview with mar casquith, the wonderful ceo of captivate, on the podcast accelerator, and we're talking about the future of podcast monetization. We talk heavily about value for value. So, yeah, check that one out if you want.

James Cridland: 45:08

Yes, and the um the morning uh of that recording. I actually caught up with him in kings cross, Um, he was coming down for a fancy meeting, and so I think this was the first time that I've ever seen uh mar casquith in a suit, Um, and he came down for a brew, Um, and we had a good chat, so that was nice Good to catch up with.

Sam Sethi: 45:30

Uh mark uh as well, and uh, yes note to self, never do a video um call when you think that the person's gonna Do just audio and then they put out a video of you looking really rough. So, yes, thanks, thanks, mark. There you go.

James Cridland: 45:48

Yes, you had quite the week of it last week. So, uh, yeah, um, um, yes, but no, apart from that, that, that that was all good for me. Um, you were. You were saying that lots of people were coming up after, uh, you went on stage. Um, for me, the weirdest thing was Going to the conference in greece assuming that I would know absolutely nobody. I did absolutely know nobody, um, but all of the other people on the um, on the panel that I was on, um, uh, all of those uh people Um, were, uh, rather embarrassingly thrilled to meet me. Oh, no, and they said, oh, we read, we read your new, your newsletter every day. It's such a thrill to be on the same panel. Um, which was um, which was very strange, um, but um, have you got?

Sam Sethi: 46:37

crump in your right wrist, james. It's very weird. Were you signing autographs Eventually? You know I was. I used to have a crump. I was wondering where you were going with that. Uh, was that what I was thinking back?

James Cridland: 46:52

Yes, no, there was none of that. But, um, yeah, that was. That was really, that was really strange. So it was, um, it was good to be there. The greek podcast industry is, um, charitably slightly behind where the rest of the of the podcast industry is, but it's getting there and I, you know, I found it a really interesting experience. So, um, so that was super cool.

James Cridland: 47:13

Uh, the other thing that happened for me is that, um, my flight was delayed over 12 hours. Now it turns out that if your flight is delayed into a different day, then all kinds of things break. Um, one of the things that breaks is the fact that there's then two flights with the same flight number On in the same day, and so they end up, um, and so I wasn't flying qf2 home, I was flying qf2d. Um, uh, because they end up having to change the flight number and so, therefore, you know, trippets says your flight's being cancelled and I'm they're going. No, it hasn't, it's just got a new number.

James Cridland: 47:52

Um, so that was a little bit bizarre, but I ended up um, um, being paid by the airline to find a hotel for the night. Um, they would cover the cost of my meal, and so I had fish and chips in a pub. It was lovely, oh, nice. Yes, thank you, quantas, for that. And what the airline didn't tell me is the eu rules, which are still apply in the uk, um, saying that if your plane is delayed more than four hours, um, then it's payday and you get, um, I think you get something like 700 euro, um, uh, in cash. So, um, so that's nice. I sent off my claim for that, so, funnily, why the? Why they wouldn't tell you, uh, the eu law there Can't think why that might be, but, um, yes, so anyway, I ended up with an awful lot of flying, an awful lot of fly. I had to go fly through sydney, which is the most dreadful, horrible old airport. So, um, still, I look forward to seeing it. Yes, I look forward to seeing it yes.

James Cridland: 48:52

Oh well, yes, you will, you will, but you won't, you won't have to. Uh, yes, oh anyway anyway.

Sam Sethi: 48:58

Uh, one note before you go. One last weird story. Yes, zack kahn Sent me an email here of apple fame. Uh, just simply, hey, sam, can you get on a call? Uh, it was the day before the podcast or it was the day of the podcast awards, and I thought 3, 30 in the afternoon. No problem, I just assumed it was one of these. You know, apple sent it out to everybody. Oh, no one important. Thank you very much. And I thought I'll just sit on the train going into london, put it on mute and I'll just watch what they have to say. So there I am, training to london. Up comes ben cave, hi ben, hi zack. And there's literally just me and one of the pr person, one other person. I'm thinking, oh Shit right, this is not the way that I wanted to say hello to ben cave, first and foremost and b. I just thought I could blend in the background, but I could.

James Cridland: 49:46

Yes, so they were doing that. They were doing that fancy presentation just for you, weren't they?

Sam Sethi: 49:50

Well, I don't think it was just for me. I think there was a lot of other fancy presentations, but I was in a one-half hour slot just for me and I was like Please, mobile phone, hold on, because I was using my mobile phone To get this signal. It was crazy, um, yeah, anyway, long story short, they mentioned two people in their new subscription that apple have, and one was j shetty and the other one was michael axon smith, who, from calm. So I said, look, hey, I know both these guys have known them 20 plus years and that was great. I then they pinged no, I got their PR. People pinged them.

Sam Sethi: 50:30

No, we can't do it, we're busy because I tried to get them onto this show. No, can't do it, blah, blah, blah, we're too busy. I went geez, I remember you two when you were scrambling around and wanting a favour when I was at TechCrunch. So I rung them up and I'm going to do it directly. I rung one. He said oh, I'm sorry, I'll come on now. Sorry about that. So I'm like, on your way up, chaps, you might remember, because on your way down you'll need a few other people, so just just bear in mind.

James Cridland: 50:59

Wow, that'll be fun. Well, looking forward to that whenever that happens exactly whenever that happens.

Sam Sethi: 51:04

We'll try and get it next week before the story is no longer valid. But there you go, yeah well, looking forward to that.

James Cridland: 51:10

Yes, those, those Apple things are very weird. I had one about a month or so ago and it was, and again, it was, it was me and Nick Qua watching, watching them go through the presentation, and they were really, really good at it, because this was 530 local time, so they must have done the presentations all day. Yes, and it was somebody technical showing off the, the, the analytics, and then it was that weird company who they've partnered up with for links and all that kind of stuff, and you know, pr was on the call and Ben Cave was on the call and various other people were on the call. Yes, and you do, you feel you feel incredibly important, but also slightly embarrassed, yes, that they're doing this presentation, particularly since at one point, the internet fell over here and so I had to reconnect, so the only person that was watching was Nick. So, yes, anyway, it's the wonderful, the wonderful way of of Apple, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't have it any other way. Um, iphone pro 15.

Sam Sethi: 52:22

I was going to say any.

James Cridland: 52:23

Any response to that invoice request funnily enough, no, okay, who'd have thought anyway, yes, in fact. Yes, I was going to go off onto macOS, sonoma, don't do it, james.

Sam Sethi: 52:41

Don't do that. I know that Apple have closed down their Twitter support, but you know this is not the way to get support now. Don't use this podcast?

James Cridland: 52:50

I don't know, I mean it might. I mean it might be.

Sam Sethi: 52:52

Hey, you do anyway, hang on, you do it. Dave Jones, go on, do it, do it, you never know no, we're all good.

James Cridland: 53:00

We're all good, we're on 50 minutes already. Okay, stop, it's no good, so that's it for this week.

Sam Sethi: 53:07

You can give feedback to James and I by sending us a boost to cram. If your podcast app doesn't support boost, then grab a new app from pod newsnet. Forward slash in new podcast apps our music is from studio dragonfly.

James Cridland: 53:20

Our voiceover is Sheila D. We use clean feed for our main audio and we're hosted and sponsored by buzzbrout podcast. Hosting made easy get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet tell your friends and grow the show and support us. The pod news weekly review will return next week, keep listening.