James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 3rd of November 2023.

Speaker 2: 0:04

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

James Cridland: 0:14

Yes, I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News. Hello, I'm Sam Suthey, the CEO of PodFans. Oh, hello In the chapters. Today, RSS Blue gets into music hosting. Spotify Raps is coming. Apple Podcasts downloads appear to decline, or are they? And the BBC reveals its podcast numbers for the first time, Plus.

Dovydas Joksas: 0:35

I am Dovidus, I am the founder of RSS Blue and I will tell you how you can play music on your podcast and give the value back to the artist.

Genevieve Hassan: 0:44

Hello, it's Genevieve here from Celebrity Capture Life. After that thing I did and I'll be on later talking about my two wins at this year's Independent Podcast Awards- they will.

James Cridland: 0:53

This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout. Last week, 3,296 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with powerful tools, free learning materials and remarkable customer support.

Speaker 2: 1:07

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:11

Now, james, I was listening to Pod News Daily and I was very impressed. You had a little jingle or a little ditty, I don't know what you want to call it. What did you do?

James Cridland: 1:21

I think you're talking about. On Halloween night, I ended up writing one story as if it was a bit of Vincent Price from Thriller. Darkness falls across the land. The midnight hour it's close at hand. Pitch black consoles, mics and stands suck colour from the podcast land. Your studio would look quite all right if only Road made things in white. But now they do. For your inspection, road has launched the White Collection. You'll find it linked from our show notes and our newsletter at podnewsnet. Happy Halloween. Yes, it turns out that you can buy microphones and microphones, stands and the roadcaster duo in white. Now that's exciting, isn't it? They?

Sam Sethi: 2:05

go white? Would Apple go black? What's going on there? Did no one send the memo to each other?

James Cridland: 2:11

We've gone black, says Apple, we'll go white then. I think it's a very clever idea from Road, because clearly they are looking at lots of people on YouTube and going, oh well, maybe we should have some fancy white microphones instead of just the black ones that we have, so why not?

Sam Sethi: 2:28

So, james, let's kick off with some proper stories Now. A few weeks ago, we interviewed Sam Means from Wave Lake about what they're doing to help music podcasters get their RSS feed created and then start to get value for value, which was great, and we thought this is the start, and, of course, we've had boost to ground ball with Adam and it's all been going very well. Now we've got RSS Blue, have started to use music as a hosting capability. I don't know if you've seen any of the work that Dovey Das has done.

James Cridland: 3:02

Yeah, I think it's very smart. So RSS Blue is a podcast hosting company, of course, not RSScom. Difference to that RSS Blue. It's the same logo, but it's in blue. It's one of the problems if you use an open logo, I guess. But yeah, and so you ended up having a chat with him, didn't you? Yeah?

Sam Sethi: 3:22

look, I wanted to find out what he's been up to, why he started this and what it means for musicians and how easy it is to do it.

Dovydas Joksas: 3:32

The most exciting thing at the moment at RSS Blue is something we call music shows. It's this idea that you can play other people's songs in your podcast and actually give value back to the artists. What got all of this started was that podcasters have been struggling in how they actually earn money. Some of them include ads in their podcast, some of them use Patreon and so on, but many of these methods are very unreliable. They contain a lot of middlemen that take large share of the value sent from the listeners. So one of the things that has been proposed was something called value for value. Listeners on compatible players can actually send payments directly to the people they listen to you without any middlemen, right? Then the second problem was that music artists started looking at podcasters saying, hmm, why couldn't I do the same thing? The artists have a very difficult time asking for value, asking for their fans to donate.

Sam Sethi: 4:51

It doesn't make a lot of sense at the end of a song, does it? Hi, there is my great song. Now can you pay me? It doesn't really work, yes.

Dovydas Joksas: 4:59

Exactly. And the third improvement to the podcasting specification has been something called wallet switching, which is this idea that the creators of these music shows can specify timestamps during which maybe a song is playing and actually give the value back to the artist. And what is so exciting right now is that RSS Blue enabled all three of those things.

Sam Sethi: 5:35

Cool, let's try and unpack all of that. That's a lot of info there, mate. So step one music artists comes to RSS Blue, says hey, I want to create a nice feed with RSS Blue. I want to upload my music, nice and simple. So they upload their MP3 or AAC, whatever format it's in. They add their wallet to that as one of the fields, save that and then that gets added to RSS Blue and uploaded to podcast index, nice and simple, and then podcast2.0 apps can then basically ingest that and streaming status can work. Are you using the medium block just to tag that as music? Is that all it is being done? So for apps, they can see it say RSS Medium equals music and therefore they can change the UI. So instead of saying episodes, they can say tracks. Instead of transcripts, it's lyrics. Is that what you're doing?

Dovydas Joksas: 6:30

Exactly Just like the players change their UI based on the medium tag let's say what you said to music we do the same at RSS Blue. So we change the UI to make it more appropriate for musicians. So at the moment, when the artists set the medium to music, the RSS feeds, these podcasts, are interpreted as music albums, Right? And one of the things that is kind of interesting, and maybe the specification can evolve in the future, is how do we actually interpret different kinds of music entities? So, for example, many artists actually don't release full albums, they might just release singles. At the moment we don't have a way to interpret this kind of different music entity. So there are still so much room to grow, so much room to essentially improve the specification to fit the needs of all the music artists.

Sam Sethi: 7:35

Okay, you're also doing one more thing which is quite nice. It's called the music finder. Tell me more about it.

Dovydas Joksas: 7:40

So that's all about making it easy for the DJs who want to do the music shows, because the question is okay, you want to do a music show, what kind of music can I use? And there are already over 4,000 songs that DJs can choose from. So what I've built at RSS Blue is this very intuitive search for existing music. Essentially, djs can search for the artists, albums, songs. If they listen to a song on a particular player, let's say fountain or potverse, they can even copy the link back to the music finder and include that in their show. I also know that potfans is going to implement this feature as well, very, very soon. Let me check with the CEO.

Sam Sethi: 8:36

Yeah, we'll do it yeah.

Dovydas Joksas: 8:40

So once the DJs select all the music they want to include into the show, we do two things. Firstly, we pick all the audio files that you will need for this show and we allow you to download them. Then you can use them in your audio editor and include everything you want. And the second thing we generate is chapters for your show. So essentially, each of the chapters is going to include the music tracks that you are referencing, and when you're ready to publish your episode, you upload those chapters back to our SS Blue. You hit publish and that's it.

Sam Sethi: 9:25

It opens up three questions for me now. Okay, first question is what does RSS Blue do to make money? How do you get into the money flow?

Dovydas Joksas: 9:35

Right. So at the moment, we have a subscription service where podcasters and artists can generate and publish their podcast for as little as $6 a month, but in the future, what we want to think about is how we can actually be part of the value for value journey. So one of the possibilities is actually including RSS Blue for a small split. When people send value to the podcasters, and the value RSS Blue could provide from this is essentially analytics, because whenever people send Satoshis to each of the recipients on the podcast that they're playing, each recipient is going to know how much money has gone through there and what song or episode was displayed on.

Sam Sethi: 10:35

Okay, so that's cool, so that's how you're going to make revenue out of it. The second question is to do with licensing. So do you include a license tag within the RSS feed generation?

Dovydas Joksas: 10:48

So at the moment, artists can include licensed information in the song or album descriptions. So what we need to do as a podcasting 2.0 community is think about ways in which we can actually license the music so that each party understands what the rules actually are. There are no rules at the moment, and we might need some of those rules to be established.

Sam Sethi: 11:21

The good thing is we do have a license tag within the RSS 2.0. There is a Creative Commons license, which is a standard which came out of blogging. As a community will work it out, but that's one of the places that I think might be interesting to start. Have you defined, has the community defined, what these music shows are going to be called, right, and what's the medium for them? Is it going to be called radio? Is it going to be called continuous? Is it going to be called music cast? Is it going to be called something else? Do you know what the medium tag is going to be used to help us recognise these shows?

Dovydas Joksas: 12:03

I don't think we need a medium tag, because some shows are going to be all about music. That's all they're going to play and they're going to include these remote items. But maybe there's just a podcast that discusses something unrelated to music, but they love music and they want to include one song in the middle of the podcast. We already have examples of that.

Sam Sethi: 12:27

Yeah, I think that would be still a podcast. So Currie and the Keeper from Adam and his wife Tina do a show and they play one track, right? Well, the podcast index on Friday night plays one track Great, that's still a podcast and a track, a music track, pure music. Single or album track would be still a music track. I get that and it's where you've got to show. That is fundamentally like a radio show to me, like Booster Grand Ball. Adam plays well, he DJs, he does what he does when he did it on MTV. He's saying what he's saying, plays music tracks, says what he says.

Sam Sethi: 13:04

I just wanted to be able to, as an app developer, be able to abstract that. Now I know Dave Jones is producing a podcast index endpoint for value time splits, so you can. That's one way of discovering them. That's not one way of labelling them. Look, I think this is amazing. I think this is a first great step forward. I think what you also have done is you've allowed the artists to put their own wallet in. Now, if somebody wants to go and try this I mean, are there some example podcasts out there now that they can go and look at?

Dovydas Joksas: 13:38

So for something like a music show, a radio show probably the best example is the Booster Grand Ball hosted by Adam Curry. You can go on apps like Podfans or Fountain to have a look of how does it feel actually from the listener side and what happens when you play a particular section of that podcast, of that show, and what happens when you send money to the podcaster and the artists. But I know this can be very overwhelming to the people who are just coming into the space. So I'm asking for those who actually want to try this thing Email me personally at dowardusbrsaysbluecom or, if you find it difficult to spell my name, you can also do info at rsaysbluecom and I will personally help you to actually create either your own music album, if you are an artist, or your own music show if you want to become a DJ and actually play other people's songs.

Sam Sethi: 14:49

WDS. Thank you so much. This is very exciting. I can't wait to try it out. I've seen a demo from you. It looks great and yeah, congratulations and thank you for helping move the podcast industry forward one more time.

Dovydas Joksas: 15:02

Thank you so much, Sam.

James Cridland: 15:03

Dovidas Joksass from RSS Blue talking about music podcasting and all of that, and it's really good to hear companies really jumping into this and making sure that everything is as direct as they possibly can. He's not injecting himself in the middle of this as a record company would do or as other music companies have done in the past. So all pretty good, I think.

Sam Sethi: 15:32

Yeah, it's nice that you can bring your own wallet and set it up. I think this is another step forward. I know Julie Costello is very keen on this because she was very worried that what Sam at Wave Lake was doing was acting as a not intentionally because he said on the interview we had that he was trying to use speed to help artists not have to understand the technicalities by creating one wallet that he would manage and then distribute out to the artists. But Julie Costello was very keen that this sounded very much like what the record companies do, which is manage your money and then distribute it, and she wanted that direct relationship. So that's quite good.

Sam Sethi: 16:14

There are a couple of questions that need to be addressed still in this space. One is what is the medium tag that we're going to use for this? Is it going to be a podcast? Is it going to be a music cast or is it going to be called radio and I wait for Adam's pontification on this one the show that you did right. Would you call it a radio show or would you call it a podcast?

James Cridland: 16:36

Well, you see, joe Rogan is a radio show, isn't it as well? And I think that's probably the problem about calling it radio, because radio can mean all kinds of things, and the Daily is a radio show. I mean, it is literally a radio show, so I'm not sure that radio is the right word for it. I quite like music cast. It's a random word that probably means nothing. It to me, communicates the fact that you are playing music in this particular show, and so therefore, that is what it is, and I think that that works. Let's move on.

James Cridland: 17:11

Yes go on. Yes, a friend of the show, dan Meisner, has been writing about what he calls an apparent decline in downloads from Apple podcasts as a result of changes to auto downloading in iOS 17, which is quite interesting. I don't know if you read all of that, sam.

Sam Sethi: 17:28

I did. Yes, it basically was that feature bug thing that they've turned into a feature, haven't they? That's fundamentally it. They've stopped downloading things that aren't after a certain period, so you just get a decline in the number of downloads.

James Cridland: 17:44

Yes, I mean, it did seem to me to be a very narrow use case, but everybody's writing about the decline in downloads from Apple podcasts as if it's the next apocalypse, which I find a little bit weird. I know that some people in the industry have been building their part up in terms of this, but I think I don't see a massive change. The shows where it's going to make a change are actually daily shows, so shows like the Pod News Daily or the Daily or shows such as that, just purely because of the way that of this particular thing that Apple has changed, most of us won't see any change in terms of downloads at all. And I think this is really what Dan was saying is that he was actually showing how you can see where the decline is coming from and whether you're particularly affected, but it's unlikely that many people are going to be particularly affected. I would have thought.

Sam Sethi: 18:46

Yeah, and I was looking at John Spurlock. He said that Buzzsprouts numbers, for example, on a global basis when they switch from Apple Core media. Again, that's caused a bigger change than probably what you're seeing here with your auto downloads.

James Cridland: 19:00

Yeah, I mean, I think it's still very early days. Not everybody has changed to iOS 17. I don't remember when iOS 17 came out, but I don't think it's been out for a full month yet, in any case, if you compare year on year. So Buzzsprouts stats are really good and, yes, they are a sponsor of this show, but nevertheless they are really good and really helpful. Buzzsproutcom slash stats and when you have a look at those year on year, apple has increased by 3.5%, spotify has increased by 3.6% and Google podcasts, the third most popular podcast app, has increased its share by 0.3%, which is still a pretty big increase from their point of view. So you know, we're not yet seeing any.

James Cridland: 19:50

I would much prefer looking at year on year stats for all of this kind of stuff. We're not necessarily seeing any big declines there, although Apple was down a little bit month on month nowhere near down. As far as Amazon Music, though, amazon Music downloads were down 50%. Wow, down from 2.2 million in September to 1.1 million in October. No idea why, but there's a thing, there's a thing. So, yeah, I mean, whenever you look at whether it's Buzzsprouts numbers, whether it's Libsyns numbers I'm trying to get some numbers out of OP3 as well, but whenever you look at this data, you know the overwhelming story appears to be at the moment that Apple, spotify and, well, google podcasts but it won't be for very much longer are the ones that are increasing their share, and actually all of the smaller podcast apps are either static or are declining, which I think is a worry, and I think that's something that we should be looking at in terms of an industry with a bit of concern to be honest.

Sam Sethi: 20:56

Now let's go back to your old haunting ground, the BBC. What have they been up to?

Speaker 2: 21:01

Oh, yes, yes, the BBC this is London calling in the overseas service of the British Broadcasting?

James Cridland: 21:08

Corporation. That's what the BBC sounds like, even today.

Sam Sethi: 21:11

Was that Brett Spencer? Because he's gone back there now Pretty well.

James Cridland: 21:16

They've published their latest consumption data, which is always interesting for the BBC Sounds app and for other things as well. Plays of on-demand radio and podcast content within BBC Sounds was up 21% year on year to 226 million. But what I also noticed is that podcast downloads on third party platforms fell 22% year on year to also reach 226 million. So it's the first time that open podcast numbers for the BBC have matched total on-demand consumption in the BBC Sounds app. Now some people have been saying well, this is good because it shows that the BBC is doing a good job with the BBC Sounds app and etc. Etc. I'm there looking at it going. This is bad because the BBC is deliberately breaking open podcast apps to promote their data hungry app that they run themselves, that sends back data every single second to the BBC, telling you where you are as well as what you're listening to, which is quite a thing. So I'm looking at this with a little bit of dread. But you know, it's obviously good for the BBC that the BBC Sounds app is going so well.

Sam Sethi: 22:30

I suppose Can they amortize BBC Sounds outside of the UK because of BBC America does so. Does BBC Sounds allow advertising inside the podcasting outside of the UK?

James Cridland: 22:43

There's no reason why it wouldn't do that. The way that the BBC works outside of the UK is that there are advertising in those particular shows anyway. So you know the BBC is actually getting money. They signed with Acast and they continue to be monetized that way. But there's also no reason why the BBC Sounds app, which is available outside of the UK, couldn't be a little bit more ad focused. You know, in the app itself. They've clearly not yet done that and internally BBC Sounds is still seen as a public service thing. So internally it's still something that the UK provides to the world rather than BBC Studios doing stuff. So that may change in the future.

James Cridland: 23:33

I think the difficulty that the BBC has is that if it starts putting lots of advertising in the BBC Sounds app, then all of a sudden that then causes problems with their radio stations because their radio stations have lots of music on them which they're not licensed to use across the rest of the world on the Internet. And the way that they've managed to get away without paying those music licenses is that it is all commercial free. And so all of a sudden if you start putting commercials in there, then it starts being a little bit more complicated in terms of how that music licensing works Well let's see what they do next.

Sam Sethi: 24:12

We'll see if they produce another report and whether the numbers go up or down. Now over to the BBC R&D James. What have they been doing?

James Cridland: 24:20

Oh yes, so our friends at the BBC Research and Development Unit, they have released the code behind their adaptive podcasting trial. We had Ian Forrester on this very show talking about that a little bit earlier on this year and also in our event in Salford. They've released all of the codes. They've released the player, the Android player. They've released the documentation containing the learnings from that work and the blog post which came out yesterday says that it marks the culmination of this phase of the project, which has been going now for 10 years.

James Cridland: 24:55

So they have been learning an awful lot in terms of what you can and can't do with sort of automatically stitched together audio that pulls in your own likes and dislikes and location and you know, and weather and all of that together and almost you could have seen, you could foresee, you know what they were doing back 10 years or so ago, talking about a set of radios. It was then. You could see that actually a bunch of companies have taken those ideas and turned those into cash in terms of a million ads, for example, which produces very bespoke, cleverly produced, automatic ads, and there's a bunch of other people doing something quite similar as well. So yeah, really interesting to see what the BBC is doing there. But if you want some of that code, it's on their GitHub and also available through their own system, because of course it's the BBC. But we linked to that yesterday in the pod news newsletter. Very nice.

Sam Sethi: 25:59

Well done, ian. Now on to Spotify. It's coming up to Christmas. What have they been doing? What's coming from Spotify?

James Cridland: 26:06

Yes, as I believe the phrase goes, holidays are coming. There you go, holidays are coming. Yes, spotify's 2023 Wrapped is coming. It's a feature which everybody looks forward to. Youtube music does exactly the same thing. By the way, it shares your favourite podcasts of 2023. It shares your favourite music of 2023. Lots of people share their stuff on the internet, on socials and all of that. And if you are a podcaster on Spotify, which of course you will be, then make sure that your show page is ready, says Spotify. You should be pumping it full of recommendations and links to your social media and there's other tools as well to get the most out of the, the anticipated traffic that your podcast should get during Spotify 2023 Wrapped. So you want to be going to the Spotify for podcasters website and taking a peek at that. It's at podcastersspotifycom.

Sam Sethi: 27:09

What should we call our one? That we do, James. You know, last year I interviewed 12 people to give us their review of 2022 and their predictions for 2023. Oh yes, what should we call ours?

James Cridland: 27:21

Because we're going to do it again. By the way, Aren't we Excellent? What are we going to call ours? I don't know. Pod news are unwrapped.

Sam Sethi: 27:28

I don't know.

James Cridland: 27:31

The future unwrapped.

Sam Sethi: 27:32

Yes, yes, who knows? That's the idea. There you go, send us a boost. Let us know what you think we should call it. Anyway, let's look across the globe before I get myself into a rabbit hole. What's happening across the globe, james?

James Cridland: 27:45

Well, germany, where I was last year, and their public service broadcaster, ard and ZDF, has published a look at media consumption in the country. Podcast consumption apparently, is 5% of all time spent with audio, the research says, which is a slight decrease from last year and actually, when you have a look at all of that data, not very much increase for podcasts in Germany, which is interesting to take a look at. Meanwhile, yougov in Germany has also published data looking at what they call pod heads, which is the 14% of Germans who listen to more than five hours of podcasting a week. Both of that data in German, so if you have a Deutsch gelernt, then you should be absolutely fine. Take a peek at that.

James Cridland: 28:34

In Australia, shout Collective has launched, which is a company which has been founded by Liam Daly, who used to work for Acast and used to work for Newscore, but he's forgiven for that bit and he's working with a select group of podcasters and helping brands get involved with them. What I thought was interesting and I had a chat with Liam earlier on in the week what I thought was interesting is he is very much focusing not just on getting brands onto podcasts, but also getting brands onto platforms like social media and YouTube, because he realizes that, of course, podcasters are quite good at the whole social media stuff and the whole influencing stuff and so he's really helping with that. It was a really interesting conversation with Liam, and Acast have given more than 9 million euro to podcasters in France, which is about nine and a half million US dollars since their launch in 2019, they said, and they publish data every so often about what type of device is consuming their podcasts, and it turns out that Apple Podcast is number one in the country and it sees three times the downloads per user than Spotify. Not a very surprising thing, because that's what we see in all kinds of other places as well, but nice to see that data from Acast in France. One kind of wonders why Acast don't release that data from other countries as well. I would love to see that data if it's split out for France, I would love to see that data split out for other countries as well.

James Cridland: 30:13

In fact, one thing that I've just done on the OP3 GitHub is asking John Spurlock whether or not there is a chance of getting a data dump, a bit like the data dump that you get from the podcast index, so you can download the entire database. I'm wondering if there's a chance of downloading I don't know all of the downloads from OP3 over the last week or over the last month, so that you can do that sort of data mining. I would love to know what the number one podcast app is, according to OP3 in the UK, for example, and compare that to the number one podcast app in the US or in Germany. I think that would be super interesting, and either I can ask John for all manner of complicated APIs or is there a chance that he can produce just a big dump in the same way the podcast index does. That would be really interesting and I'm sure that there'll be a ton of stories that would come out of that.

Speaker 2: 31:19

People News on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 31:24

Job News. Well, ellie Puckett has been named as CEO of Resonate Recordings. There's things going on at Resonate Recordings. Co-founder and former CEO, jacob Bozarth, is focusing on Resound, which is the AI editing tool that he is working on. And in fact, resonate Recordings have also just sold their Resonate Originals podcasts to Tenderfoot TV, so they've got some quite big shows, including Culpable, and it's the first acquisition by Tenderfoot TV.

James Cridland: 31:56

The companies have been working together for a long time anyway, so you know, worthwhile keeping an eye on what's going on over at Resonate Recordings. I suspect even more changes in terms of that to come. And also, natalie Harvey has been appointed as Chief Revenue Officer at Mamma Mia. She joins from Seven West Media, a very big female media company based here in Australia. Weirdly, the Chief Revenue Officer for Mamma Mia was a bloke and the bloke has gone and now it's somebody that you know I mean arguably understands the target audience a little bit more, but they're a great company worthwhile keeping an eye on. So, natalie Harvey joining not from a podcast company but joining from a large media owner. So that's interesting to keep an eye on there too. And if you're looking for a job, pod News has podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world. It's podcasting's largest jobs board and it's free to post podnewsnet slash jobs the tech stuff, tech stuff On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 33:09

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where we do all of the TED talk. Here's where we do all of the tech talk, All kinds of stuff going on, including Headliners Eddy, which is available in more than 10 languages Now, which they've just announced. They also produce this clever promo pack with lots of AI stuff for you. Episode Art Images is now available alongside summaries and keywords and quotes.

Sam Sethi: 33:36

It's quite a smart looking thing that Sam yeah, it is, and they seem to be evolving. Eddy, which is their transcription tool, very nicely. So again, I think they're using a bit of AI to take out bits and pieces from the transcription to give you to use for your social media. Yes, nice little tool.

James Cridland: 33:53

Yes, it looks really good, Although there is an open source version of that sort of thing, One of these editing tools that lets you edit using text. It's called Coalesce, which you can grab on GitHub now. It's open source. It's free to run on your own computer forever, that is, if you understand how to run Docker commands in your terminal. So that's beyond the limit of my intelligence, so I won't be playing with it. But you can probably see that if this sort of technology is now available as an open source tool, then quite a lot of podcast hosts will be beginning to implement this sort of thing in their services as well. So you know, perhaps the days of you know, Eddy or Descript or some of these other tools being available as separate services may go away if they're available using open source tools such as Coalesce. I thought that that was interesting to take a look at too.

Sam Sethi: 34:58

Yeah, I thought that's what the doctor said to me when I saw it. You've got Docker commands in your terminal. Anyway, no idea what that sentence meant Right Now. Moving on, yes, you wrote a little piece about the upcoming new version of Chrome and how the IP address might be hidden by Google promoting their own VPN and that might cause a problem for podcast analytics. That seems to be getting a steam of head up In terms of there's a new version of Chrome that's come out. I just posted about it briefly on the Master Don and Dave Jones, friend of the show, said man, I've been warning about this for the last two years and the pic just keeps on ticking like it is all the time in the world. They act like IP addresses will always work fine as a metric when everything is telling them that it won't unpack all that for me, james, please.

James Cridland: 35:57

Yeah, I mean IP addresses have been the glue that has, you know, stuck a lot of podcast revenue together. There are companies that will sell you all kinds of information about the type of person behind a particular IP address, because IP addresses are typically given to households, and if you spot certain traffic coming out of that household, then you can take a good guess about who might live there and then target your ads appropriately, and I think this is interesting. We've got Google testing this new feature by using proxy servers. Apparently, I have to say, google has had a feature, similar feature, using proxy servers for quite some time, so a bit surprised that this is a big, a big deal and a big story, but perhaps they're launching something which is a little bit different.

James Cridland: 36:53

What Google also does, though, is that they are promoting their own VPN a lot at the moment. So, if you buy any storage on Google at all, you get a Google One account, and in your Google One account that also comes with a free VPN which you can use. It's a pretty basic one, but it seems to work quite nicely and quite fast. Comes on your Android phone, yes, but you know you can also get it on iOS. You can get it on your Mac, you can get it on your PC, and that, of course, also hides the user's IP address as well.

James Cridland: 37:27

Then you've got Apple with Apple's VPN system, which they've turned on for certain things, but they've not turned on for Apple podcasts yet. Imagine the uproar when they turn it on for Apple podcasts, because you know, of course it's going to come, and the question is when's it going to come? So I find all of that is fascinating and, of course, the amount of people that are just using VPNs now just to, sort of, you know, help them not be tracked as much as they have been in the past. And VPNs quite often come with additional features such as ad blocking and all kinds of other things in there as well. So I do wonder whether people who are earning money from podcast advertising, using IP addresses to track users and to target, you know, against them, are going to all of a sudden find that the bottom has fallen out of that particular market, because none of the information that they get is actually particularly relevant and particularly right for them anymore.

Sam Sethi: 38:33

I also think that Dave sent me a really good blog post that he'd written a little while ago called Time to Hang Up the Egoes and Move Beyond IP Addresses. I highly recommend reading that. I'll try and put that in the show notes. It talks about two other ways that you could address this. One is with ULIDS, and I'm going to ask you to talk about that in a minute, james and then the other one is also using value for value payments, so you know the exact payment from one person to the next, but James, remind me and everyone else what's a ULID.

James Cridland: 39:05

Yeah, so a ULID is just a random set of characters you know, essentially given to a particular user for a particular episode that they're listening to. So you can't track a VAT person at all. But the one thing that you can do with the ULID is that you have a much better understanding of how many downloads you're getting, Because it's possible, of course, for you to listen to a show, start listening to it at home as you drive to work, listening to it in the car through your mobile phone connection, and then you finish in the office. You've hopped between three different IP addresses, but you're the same person. Now the IAB would count you as three different people, and so the ULID would fix that.

James Cridland: 39:55

But what Dave's blog post, which is a great blog post? What Dave's blog post is all about is it's about stats, podcast stats, and I think podcast stats are one thing, and I'll say a bit more about those later. But I think the other sort of side of this is the whole advertising thing, and if you can't even work out what country I'm in because I've hidden my IP address, let alone what city I'm in or what part of the city I'm in, then I think that gives advertisers a real issue as we go forward.

Sam Sethi: 40:30

Yeah, and again, highly recommend reading that blog post. Last question, james, on this what ever happened to the Cookie Apocalypse?

James Cridland: 40:40

Well, I mean, cookies are going away. Google keep on saying that cookies are going away, and then they get perorously close and they say, yeah, dude, did we say this year? We probably mean next year? And everybody breathes a sigh of relief, and then 12 months later they go yeah, my mic, keep you back again. So cookies are important things for helping people use the internet, of course, but they can be used. Third party cookies certainly can be used to track people as they go around the internet, and that's a bad thing for privacy and everything else. I mean, at the end of the day, as with DRM as well and everything else, quite a lot of these are taxes on stupidity, and if you are clever enough and crafty enough, you can get around any DRM. You can get around any targeting or get rid of any targeting that you're actually going through on the internet. There's an awful lot of relatively easy things that you can do, but most people don't care, and most people don't necessarily care enough to actually use any of these tools to help them.

Sam Sethi: 42:01

Let's move on, then. Dave again, busy boy that he is has created a new endpoint for the podcast index API. It allows developers to get value, time splits, the wallet, switching by episode. I looked at this and I was like very expectant and very excited for when this was going to come out, because I was one of the people who asked Dave for it, I think. But then I realized we already pulled this data natively through the RSS feed, so I wasn't quite sure why we needed another endpoint for that particular type of podcast episode.

James Cridland: 42:35

Yeah, I guess it's just making life easier for some people so you don't have to pass a complete RSS feed and you can just ask for the individual information there, and certainly that ends up being rather more private and rather more useful. But yeah, so I linked to a typical result from Booster Ground Ball, which seems to work quite nicely. So many congratulations, dave, on yet another endpoint to the podcast index API. I look forward to it being documented, he says, and Tenapod is working on supporting subtitles and transcripts, which I'm very excited about. It's a really good Android app which is open source, works fantastically well.

James Cridland: 43:18

They have spent a lot of time reviewing the ways that other podcast apps are using subtitles and transcripts. It's a good GitHub conversation which is worthwhile reading, and they are having open meetings about what their next steps are. If I've got any criticism of Tenapod, it's just that they are incredibly slow at implementing stuff, but nevertheless they do it right when they do do it. So it's worthwhile keeping an eye on their GitHub and worthwhile seeing how that large amount of people are all working together to support subtitles and transcripts. And if you're not doing subtitles and transcripts yet in your own podcast, then you really should be. Rsscom will do that for you, buzzsprout will do that for you, bunches of other companies will do those transcripts for you as well. It makes such a difference, so it would be really good.

Sam Sethi: 44:21

These script has added a set of AI actions tools that can help with specific production tasks, including chapter generation tools, a summary generator and a social post writer.

James Cridland: 44:32

Yes, they have, and more AI tools to come from Descript. And it's not Descript, it's Descript. I learned when I was working out how to credit them as a sponsor of the Pod News Daily show this month. It's Descript. They're saying to put tar. So we've been saying it wrong all these years. Yes, yes, they are very keen that people know that Descript now includes the most reliable remote recording solution out there which allows you to record crystal clear podcast and video from anywhere, then transcribe, edit and publish all in one app. So, yes, so hurrah for them. And Hindenburg version 2.02 is out. It has one big, big, big change. If you're on a Mac, then it's no longer dark as night. It is also bright as day if you are using the light mode on your Mac rather than dark mode, and it looks really smart now. They've done a really good job of supporting light mode and I shared an episode of the Pod News Weekly review so you can see what sort of thing this looks like once it's been edited down.

Sam Sethi: 45:51

Right, James, let's look at some of the upcoming events and awards.

James Cridland: 45:54

Yes, we should, and there was an event that just happened, the Independent Podcast Awards, which took place on Monday evening. You can find a full list of the winners, including a link to trailers and hosting details as well, which is quite interesting. Lots of pod bean I noticed in the Independent Podcast Awards winners. It's worth a peek. Anyway, the winner of the Independent Podcast of the Year was Celebrity Catch-Up Life. After that thing, I did Genevieve Hassan, who we spoke to two years ago, winning two awards, and here she is talking with Sam.

Genevieve Hassan: 46:29

I'm still in a bit of shock, to be honest. This time last week, if he told me that I was going to win Podcast of the Year, I would be like no. Actually, this time last week, if he told me I was going to win Best TV and Film Podcast, I still would have said no, I didn't think I was going to win anything. And so to win Film and TV was amazing. And then I also didn't know that there was a Podcast of the Year award either. So when they announced that, I was like really, there's an award for this, yes, and then I won.

Genevieve Hassan: 46:58

I was like oh, my husband's reaction was great, though he filmed it. It was almost like, you know, when you see awards ceremonies and they've got a camera on all the nominees so that when they announced the winner, you can then see the reaction of all the losers. And I feel like that's why my husband was filming so he can see my reaction when I lost, which he didn't. But when they announced the winner and they said my name, all you can hear is my husband filming and he goes oh shit, so I can make me was more surprised than I was.

Sam Sethi: 47:24

Yes, he was going. Oh shit, because I'll never hear the end of this. No, I'm joking, I'm joking, I'm only joking.

Genevieve Hassan: 47:31

Every day he has been saying to me. He was like oh, do you know that you are a double award-winning podcast? I was like, oh, I am now.

Sam Sethi: 47:37

And you've gone. Yeah, that still means you have to make me a cup of tea. Now let's go back a fraction. So these are the awards on Monday, the 30th of October, and it was the independent podcast awards that you won. When you entered, what was your expectation? You know, just to get a bit more publicity, was that it?

Genevieve Hassan: 47:56

First, when I heard that there was an independent podcast awards, I was super happy that this even existed, because there has been lacking a space that can celebrate and recognise independent podcasts that just get lost in the landscape of podcasts that are made by the big boys and they're the ones that seem to get all the headlines and the recognition and the awards wins. Honestly, I entered the British podcast awards and I didn't get shortlisted or nominated and I was super bummed about it. This was last year that I entered, didn't get shortlisted for anything and I kind of thought, oh, what's the point? I mean, obviously I know people listen, but to have that industry recognition amongst your peers means a lot. So after not getting nominated for anything last year, I was super bummed and this year I thought I'm going to boycott it, I'm not going to enter anything. Oh, rebellious, I'm not going to enter anything. It's too depressing. But when these awards came up, I kind of thought you know, this actually is a really good ceremony. It is a really good awards that will celebrate, I think, the hardworking grafters that have been doing this for the love of doing it, that don't get any recognition at all. So I entered and thought, yeah, I classed myself as one of the grafters, one of the little guys who's been trying hard over the past three years, which I appreciate is not as half as long as some other people that have been, you know, podcasting for the love of it for even longer decades.

Genevieve Hassan: 49:25

During the ceremony, when they were announcing the winners, there was like a voiceover that read out all the names of the nominees and every time, you know, a podcast would be named out, they'd be a cheer in the room, they'd be like yeah, woo, and some of those were people that worked on the podcast. But some of those other people were other people who were aware of the podcast and were supporting it and they were going like yeah, woo, and so they were in. People were cheering for all these podcasts and then when my category came up and they read my podcast name out, only my husband went yeah, whoa, oh. So literally only my husband has heard of my podcast. There's no way I'm going to win this award. And then I did and I was like, well, there you go.

Sam Sethi: 50:05

And did you get the speech out? You know, with the tears there, what happened. Come on.

Genevieve Hassan: 50:10

I think this is actually really great about the awards, because they were like 21, 22 awards given out and the time frame was the ceremony is going to last an hour and I was like how are they going to give out 20 odd awards in an hour? This is not possible, it's never going to happen. But it was actually run really well and I think every award ceremony should run like this, where they announced the winner. You go up, you collect your award, you take a picture and then you go out out back and then to a camera, you say your thank yous and do all that kind of stuff over there. So it keeps everything moving swiftly and you're not kind of like sitting there an hour and a half in with a numb bum thinking I wish this was over. So, yeah, that's, every award ceremony should be run like this. It was brilliant.

Sam Sethi: 50:49

Yeah, I should give the British podcast awards. They did that this year as well, so it was quite nice. But even then by the end you could hear people shuffling going. I just want to get to the wine, hurry up. But anyway, let's give out some credits. The awards were launched by Wine Now Media in conjunction with Verbal Diorama podcast, which is itself an indie air. Then they were seeking to celebrate truly independent talent of UK based podcasters who don't have the financial backing of brands to support them. So congratulations to those guys there for putting on this award. And it just wasn't about podcasts themselves. They were that were recognized very odd. This one clown sex won the category for best podcast artwork and a Birkin bread won the best podcast for jingle. So some very odd awards being handled out there. But look, let's get back to you.

Genevieve Hassan: 51:38

I'm just saying the clown sex podcast art is very good. They check it out.

Sam Sethi: 51:42

Okay, it's by Natasha Sutton Williams. There you go Now. Look, we spoke. Let's go back to those of people who may have listened to the early pod news weekly when it was called pod land. That will remember you being a guest on the show and at that time you were just starting out. You said in that interview you were struggling sometimes to get the celebrities, but you know it was a hard sell. But you also managed to get a wonderful Virgin Airlines deal which I think maybe have helped. So are you now finding it easier to get celebrities?

Genevieve Hassan: 52:18

No no no difference has been made whatsoever. It's still still soul destroying. I still get a mountain of rejection emails. I still have radio silence from publicists and PRs and agents who the gatekeepers for the celebrities. And every season I just started my sixth season now and every season I have a wobble where I'm like why am I doing this? This is so difficult, why am I banging my head against a brick wall? So soul destroying? Why am I doing this? And then I book another guest and it keeps me going a little bit longer. But no, it's no easier. I wish it was, but unfortunately, no, it's not, especially not when you're doing it on your own.

Sam Sethi: 52:58

Have you found that you've got more sponsors coming to you, though, or anything else? Is that becoming easier?

Genevieve Hassan: 53:03

No, I have no sponsors, okay.

Sam Sethi: 53:07

Here's your advert space. Go for it.

Genevieve Hassan: 53:10

Well, so I'll say I have no sponsors. But I have had people come to me offering to advertise on the podcast and I have turned them all down because I don't feel like they are the right fit for me and the podcast. I don't want to just take money from any old product.

Sam Sethi: 53:29

Then you want to sell mattresses like everybody else and some rubbish food.

Genevieve Hassan: 53:34

So I had an American company approach me and I can see why they thought there would be a link. Oprah went free, does this thing every year where she's like Oprah's favorite things, and it'll be like this is Oprah's favorite book, this is her favorite watch, this is like her favorite film. And it turns out Oprah has favorite pajamas and these pajamas are bamboo pajamas. They keep you cool in the summer, warm in the winter. And the company that makes Oprah's favorite pajamas came to me and said we'd love to advertise on your podcast. We think you'll listeners would love Oprah's pajamas and let's talk about how we can do something together. And I went onto their website and Oprah's pajamas cost $130 and cost $50 to ship to the UK, where majority of my listeners are.

Genevieve Hassan: 54:26

So when I were looking at $180, convert that into pounds we'll probably look at about 160 quid. I would not pay 160 quid for a pair of pajamas. I don't care that they're Oprah's favorites, I would not wear them, and we are in the midst of a cost of living crisis and people can't afford 160 pound pair of pajamas and I feel it would be irresponsible to try and promote that when it's not something that I believe in. I can see why they saw the links. It's like oh, you're a celebrity podcast, we've got a celebrity endorsed product, let's do something together. But I just feel like if I wouldn't use it myself and if it kind of goes against my beliefs and values, then I don't really want to just push it for the sake of getting money for it. Yes, I am self-funded and I don't have any sponsors, but I don't just want to take the money for the sake of it.

Sam Sethi: 55:18

Who's been your favorite celebrity?

Genevieve Hassan: 55:20

I don't know, favorites are difficult to say, but that's very close to my heart is I was very lucky to have Jerry Springer on the podcast in April and it actually turned out to be his last broadcast interview before he died. I thought he actually looked quite frail when we spoke over Zoom and I saw him and his hands were shaking a little bit and he did seem quite frail but I just kind of thought, well, you know he's getting on a bit, and didn't really think too much of it. And also in hindsight it had just been his birthday and I said happy birthday, how did you celebrate? And he said well, I was just happy to make it to 17.

Genevieve Hassan: 56:05

And he also just retired as well from his TV career. And I said enjoy your retirement. And he was like I certainly will and I hope to be able to come back and see you again sometime. Obviously he knew at the time that he was sick pancreatic cancer. He knew at the time that he wasn't going to be around for much longer, but he still said all those things and it's sad and retrospect, but his sign off was really perfect. He kind of finished by saying his trademark Jerry line of be kind to yourselves and each other, and you know nice, well done it's got a special place in my heart because it was his last one.

Genevieve Hassan: 56:43

I was really honored that it could be his last interview and I know people kind of have a perception of him that he's really trashy and I think people just had difficulty separating him from the show that he happened to present. But as a person, as a man, he was really lovely, he was really humble. He actually cried doing our interview, getting emotional, talking about the tragedy his family suffered all his literally all his family were killed in the Holocaust, apart from his parents who were one of the last 70 odd people out of Germany before Hitler closed the gates and talking about he got emotional, he cried and you know, I hope people listen to it and realize that actually he wasn't nice guy and he wasn't this trashy person that people made him out to be, to be despised and a villain. He was actually a really lovely man.

Sam Sethi: 57:31

Yeah, that series five, episode eight, from the 15th of March. If you want to go back and listen to that, you've just started series six as well. Congratulations, that's with Paul Young.

Genevieve Hassan: 57:44

Yes, Paul Young is the latest guest. He does a mean impersonation of Donald Duck singing Rhinestone Cowboy, which has to be. It has to be seen to be believed. So I have actually tweeted the video so you can watch him do it as well as listen to that on the podcast, and also him singing a little bit of yesterday by the Beatles in the style of Daffy Duck.

Sam Sethi: 58:09

Look, Genevieve, it's been great catching up with you again. Congratulations once again on the awards. Tell everyone where they can find your podcast.

Genevieve Hassan: 58:17

Just go to celebritycatchupcom and you can find the podcast there.

Sam Sethi: 58:21

And who's on next? Can we find out?

Genevieve Hassan: 58:25

Well, exclusive, Although I was hoping I could keep this for a Christmas special because guest booking is so difficult and also because of the actor strike has put a massive spanner in the works as well. I had three guests that were lined up who are now can't do because of the actor strikes. They can't come on a guest. Unless I managed to find someone in the next two weeks that could go on in two weeks. Then it will be the legend that is Alan Jones. Oh, we're walking in the air.

Sam Sethi: 58:56

fame and that's going to be your Christmas special.

Genevieve Hassan: 59:00

I know it was supposed to be my Christmas special, but if the guests don't happen, it's going to be a November special, it's going to be a mid-November special.

Dovydas Joksas: 59:09

It's going to be in my early.

Genevieve Hassan: 59:11

But yes, I have to say big props to Alan for being the most technically competent celebrity I have ever interviewed. He very much impressed me. When we were recording and he picked up his phone he was like do you want me to record a copy of this as well? In actuality, and I was like, oh my God, nobody has ever offered to do this before. Literally, he wins hand down A star for being the best technically competent celebrity ever. There have been some that have been hopeless. Usually I'm IT support for people when I interview people and have to direct them how to turn their original sound on and all that kind of stuff. But for him to actually offer to make his own recording, I was like, wow, you win.

Sam Sethi: 59:48

Well done, Alan. Anyway, Genevieve, thank you so much. Good luck for the next 12 months. Maybe we'll catch up next year and see you have any more awards you want by then.

Genevieve Hassan: 59:57

Thanks, sam, thanks for having me.

James Cridland: 59:58

Genevieve Hassan from Celebrity Catch-Up Life. After that Thing I Did. Other events going on, of course, include PodCon MX, which is in Mexico next week, the event presented by RSScom, and I will be there and I'm looking forward to hopefully speaking with some of the people at PodCon MX in this very show next week. And there are more events, both paid for and free, in PodNews virtual events or events in a place with people. If you're organizing something, tell the world about it. It's free to be listed at podnewsnet slash events.

Speaker 2: 1:00:31

Boostergram corner, corner, corner.

James Cridland: 1:00:35

on the PodNews weekly review yes, it's our favorite time of the week. It's where we get Boostergrams and read them out. And we've got two, haven't we we?

Sam Sethi: 1:00:44

have indeed. So Adam Curry sent us a 777 boost, which I don't know. It's our rush boost, god knows. I need to keep up with these Right. Sorry, gents, but true. Micro payments cannot be done through the current payment networks. It is simply not usable for sub $1 payments. A FedNow is a new network that might make it possible. You have to be an approved financial institution to integrate it, and I have my eyes on this, but see little movement. I think this was in relation to us saying James, why wouldn't Apple just turn Apple pay into a micro payment system?

James Cridland: 1:01:20

Yes, and I have to say I think Adam is wrong on this. Yes, true, micro payments can't be done through Visa or Mastercard, but given that Apple pay have your credit card details anyway, given that they are already an approved financial institution both of those services, apple pay and Google pay are there's absolutely no reason why you couldn't fill up a wallet of $5, of $10, and then use that through Apple and Google's systems to pay out in the same way that they're already doing for apps and indeed YouTube is already doing for content. I don't see any reason at all why you couldn't use micro payments for that sort of thing. I do love FedNow is a new network that might make it possible.

James Cridland: 1:02:13

Well, yeah, if you're American and the American banking industry is still stuck in 1975, it's the oldest, most useless thing People are still using checks in America. If you can believe such things, sam, how the largest, most successful country in the world can have such a poor banking system. I really don't know why we're all being held back because of America. Who knows? But anyway, I'm absolutely convinced that, were Apple or Google minded to, they could very easily do micro payments using Apple pay or Google pay. The fact is, they're not minded in doing that, and the fact is, of course, that 30% would go to Apple and to Google. Even if they were going to and I think that that's clearly going to be an issue there I would love for that to be the case. But yeah, I mean thrilled and excited that the FedNow service allows interbank clearing and settlement right that enables funds to be transferred from the account of a sender to the account of a receiver in near real time.

James Cridland: 1:03:27

You know, that thing that we've had in the UK for 20 years and the thing that we've had here in Australia for 10 years. Well done America. Another triumph, another first. You're doing fantastically. And Kyren from the Mim Mortals podcast a little bit of politics. He ends up saying excellent, as always, sending us a row of ducks, double two, double two sets silly YouTube and Apple. When will they learn? When will they learn? Indeed, I've got no idea what that's for.

James Cridland: 1:03:57

I'm trying to scratch my brain on that one now and thank you for your boost as well, If you get value from what we do. The Pod News Weekly Review is separate from Pod News. Sam and I share everything from it and we really appreciate your support so we can continue making this show. And you can become a power supporter with your fiat currency at weeklypodnewsnet, or supporters with sats by hitting the boost button in your podcast app Podnewsnet. Such new podcast apps will help you find a new app.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:22

Now, james, this podcast has the strap line of Pod News Weekly the last word in podcasting. So I always thought that, given that it was supposed to be the last word, I would ask you to give us the last word your review of the week. James, take it away.

James Cridland: 1:04:36

Well, we're repeatedly told that podcast analytics are bad and very poor and a bit rubbish, and when updating Pod News' page this week on podcast statistics, I was struck by actually how far we've come in five years, because your podcast host measures every single download. Nothing is left out and with the IAB's measurement guidelines, we have broadly comparable data from everybody. But now we've got robust data from Apple podcasts in terms of total plays and consumption that's not based on downloads but actual plays within the world's most popular podcast app for consumption, spotify for podcasters gives us everything from demographic information like gender and age to even how many times your show has been seen in their app, and the data coming from YouTube gives you unrivaled retention and marketing data from a best in market tool of analytics already used by millions of creators across the world. And prefix services like OP3 and others mean that our data can be compared and can be open open to advertisers, researchers and anyone who wants it. So we truly have the best of both worlds complete download data plus three large samples that offer additional color and focus and the opportunity to share data with others. Other forms of mass media like radio, magazines or newspapers are very jealous at what we have, so let's stop talking.

James Cridland: 1:05:57

Podcast analytics down Now. What's happened for you?

Sam Sethi: 1:06:01

this week, sam. Well, good news. Well, good news for me, I didn't about anyone else. We've upgraded our servers. We're going to add the first of all, the 15,000 V4V podcasts. So we've created a job to do that without trying to pull down the whole podcast index by asking for all in one hit. We're removing the wait list in the next week or two, so once those 15,000 are in, we'll then remove the wait list and open the doors for everyone. And yeah, the last one is we have built a new music homepage which we'll be pushing out later this week, so a dedicated page for people who are musicians, like Ainsley, costello and others.

James Cridland: 1:06:43

Very fancy, and if you're a new listener to this very show, then, firstly, congratulations on getting this far. And secondly, when Sam talks about Wee, he's talking about Podfans, which you can find at podfansfm. It's probably worthwhile mentioning. Yes, todd Cochran, youtube's biggest critic in terms of creators. What's Todd doing these days?

Sam Sethi: 1:07:07

Well, listening to the boys. Last night on the new media show, Todd's announced that he's going to be launching a vlog called Beyond the Office A vlog, a video blog. On YouTube. Yes, indeed, that is what it was. I think even Rob Greenlee fell off his chair at that one.

James Cridland: 1:07:25

Yes, Getyourowncom and also youtubecom. Don't leave me Todd Cochran. Wow, wow, there you go. There's a turnaround. I wonder who at Google has convinced him to do that.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:41

Well, and then, on top of it all, if you want to find out more about what Todd's doing, he's on tonight's podcasting 2.0 show talking about what he's up to with Open RSS, I suppose, podcast mirror and all the stuff that Blueberry's been doing. But I did find out one thing last night. Actually, if you put Todd and Rob at 1.5x, they sound much better than they do at 1x. I do find that.

James Cridland: 1:08:05

I mean I'm terribly sorry. I've listened to Todd and Rob at 1.5x and with silent skipping for the last two years and it's a really good show that way it is, it's a really good show. By the way, as is this I listened to this show at 1.7 times while I'm editing it.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:25

Oh, okay, I have to say I sound better at 1.25x. I think I just need to speed up. I think I talk too slow.

James Cridland: 1:08:31

I mean, I can do that for you. If you like, sam, I can turn you up to 1.5x or whatever in the edit.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:40

Oh no, don't do that. There's a few grandmas who won't be able to keep up. Look, don't do it for everyone Now, james. Look, that's enough about me. What's been happening for you this week, james?

James Cridland: 1:08:48

I came back from Munich and of course, it was very good at Munich, talking there, and of course, I did a big keynote where I was standing at the podium doing my keynote, reading my notes from my iPad, which, of course, I then, at the end of the keynote, left on the. I left my iPad on the, on the, on the lectern, which was a bit ridiculous, because then I flew to Copenhagen and realized that I was in Munich for less than 24 hours in a few days and went and rang them and said, yeah, I don't suppose you found an iPad, have you? And yeah, so the. The trick about that is to see if you can get your name onto the lock screen, because my name was not on there and nobody knew who's it was Right. So there's a thing, but that was nice.

James Cridland: 1:09:43

When I was in Copenhagen, I caught up with Chris from Hindenburg, the boss, and it was good to catch up with him for a beer, very expensive beer, but he paid. So that was okay. That is all I'll say to you. Yes, yes, indeed, so it was good to catch up there and good to speak. At audio days, I shared interesting tools that you can play with from the world of podcasting and I was on directly after Malvina Goldfeld from Podimo and she was really good. She had flown up from I think she's in Barcelona or Madrid I think she's in Madrid but she had flown up to be up in Denmark and gave a really, really good speech about the power of audio and the power of storytelling in terms of helping people understand other people's points of view, so that was a really good thing.

James Cridland: 1:10:39

Finally, I got to report a bug with Pocketcasts. There's been a bug in Pocketcasts for the last three years and it's driven me absolutely scatty and I thought finally I should probably since I've just found out where the GitHub is I should probably just report it as a bug. So I reported it as a bug and within a week, someone from Pocketcasts has worked out what it is that I was doing, agreed that there was a bug and pushed a fix for that bug, which will be in the next version of the podcast player. It's a real edge case, so clearly I was probably the first to actually report it and notice it, but it's always really nice to have somebody agree and fix a bug pretty well instantly, so full marks to them for that. It's worth all of the money that I've spent on that app. So hurrah, well done, and that's it for this week.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:31

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James Cridland: 1:11:41

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Speaker 2: 1:12:01

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