Speaker 1: 0:00

It's Friday, the 10th of May 2024.

Speaker 2: 0:04

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

Speaker 1: 0:13

Yes, I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans.

Speaker 1: 0:18

In the chapters today. Iab have released some new numbers from the US. What do they say? Acast have released some new numbers all over the US. What do they say? Acast have released some new numbers all over the world. What do they say? Iab version 2.2 is released, but does anybody care? And Buzzsprout releases Fanmail what did you think of it? This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with easy and powerful tools, free learning materials, remarkable customer support and now fan mail.

Speaker 2: 0:47

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Speaker 4: 0:52

James, let's kick off the show then. The IAB US numbers have just come out. Podcasting is still, it looks like, not a $2 billion industry in the US. The IAB figures show that podcast revenue has slowed. Tell me more.

Speaker 1: 1:06

Yes, they have, and it's I don't know. It came as a bit of a surprise to me because we've been seeing things like you know, podcast revenue up 20% year on year from all of the big companies. But it turns out that while the big companies have been seeing that, the mid-tier companies have not been seeing that and that means that podcast revenue growth slowed in 2023. And we haven't actually hit $2 billion yet. We only saw a modest it says revenue increase of 5% to $1.9 billion. That's according to the IAB's release which came out early yesterday and, yeah, so it was quite a surprise really. I think we were expecting more, but it basically says a few of the largest podcast companies maintained double digit growth, but mid-tier companies hit a speed bump, but revenue is already bounding back. They say Did that come as a surprise to you? 1.9 billion.

Speaker 4: 2:07

No, because I don't follow these. I really don't follow these. I look at them. I mean we're going to be talking about other stats later from PodTrack and various others and I look at these and I will ask you later how do they come up with all of these things? I mean, it's a sample survey. Is it some real figures from everybody reporting? How is it done?

Speaker 1: 2:30

even it's actually pretty good. It's a survey which is sent to leading podcast industry professionals. It's something which these sorts of things exist all over the world. There's a thing called SMI, which is in most markets, and particularly here in Australia, where every single company basically reports their numbers in, because they get to see everybody else's numbers, and that's actually really helpful, you know, really helpful in terms of that. And so the Standard Media Index is what SMI is called. I believe it's not actually called that now. I think it's got a new name, but that's what I know it as.

Speaker 1: 3:07

And so this is actually done for the IAB by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and they put these numbers together. It's the eighth time that they've put these numbers together Now. Every single time they come up with a prediction of what it's going to be next year, come up with a prediction of what it's going to be next year, and we're actually recording this before these numbers are released. But obviously we've got the embargoed numbers. I'm busy trying to work out whether today, or rather yesterday, in the newsletter, Thursday's newsletter, whether or not I actually say well, according to the IAB last year they would be 2.2 billion, and according to the IAB a year before they would be 2.4 billion, but they're only 1.9 billion. I think that might be a bit cheeky, so maybe I won't do that.

Speaker 4: 3:56

They say it's on track to reach 2.6 billion by 2026. So you know, the estimates are going up, if nothing else is going up.

Speaker 1: 4:04

Yes. Well, yes, they would. They would say that, wouldn't they? You know, I always look at all these numbers and I'm there thinking it's just somebody guessing and that's fine, but I don't think any of their guesses have been actually correct so far. So still, there we go.

Speaker 4: 4:21

Well, it's a bit like the weather report, isn't it? You know it's raining outside, but they always say and next week it's going to be sunny. Because if they said next week's going to be miserable and rainy, everyone would go oh, forget it, I'm staying home for the rest of the week. Then, yeah, yeah, yeah, no exactly.

Speaker 1: 4:35

I mean you know there is a certain amount of the IAB, you know talking the industry up. I mean I can understand why they do that, but that's also not necessarily particularly helpful if you just want the numbers. One thing that they do say is that comedy and sports are both the genres doing the best. Sports, the second most popular content genre, comedy, the most popular Overtaking news now, which it never used to. News always used to be the most popular overtaking news now, which it never used to. News always used to be the most popular. But I wonder whether that's the Donald Trump effect, in that Trump used to drive an awful lot of the news categories and perhaps when he's back as president which seems depressingly likely later on in the year or early next year then perhaps that will actually change the fortunes of the news shows.

Speaker 4: 5:34

But you know who knows, and you're trying to depress me this morning so far.

Speaker 1: 5:39

I know I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I mean yes, between the IAB figures and Donald Trump.

Speaker 4: 5:45

I think I might as well just go and slit my wrists.

Speaker 1: 5:49

I mean to be honest, if Sleepy Joe wins, then it's Sleepy Joe, and you know, I'd be surprised if he's still alive by that point. So I think it's the choice of it's two pretty awful choices, isn't it?

Speaker 4: 6:05

I think everyone should look at the running mates. That's who's going to be running the country eventually.

Speaker 1: 6:10

Ah, yes, okay, yes, exactly. And so we've got Kamala Harris, and then we've got whoever is going to be stupid enough to run with Donald.

Speaker 4: 6:19

Trump, marjorie Taylor Greene Go on, do it.

Speaker 1: 6:22

It's not going to be Pence, is it? So he's fallen out of favour. So, yes, anyway, welcome to politics. On the US politics.

Speaker 4: 6:31

Oh, what's that comedy? We don't know. Oh, what's that comedy? Yes, move the category Right look. Yes.

Speaker 1: 6:39

Anyway, those were negative figures, but let's see some nice positive numbers now.

Speaker 4: 6:45

Yes, ACAST results came out for Q1 podcast hosting. Basically, the company was number one for global podcast publishing according to PodTrack. We will find out if they're still number one later on, but the good news is they grew 25% sales year on year, mainly driven by North America, which they're very good at growing at the moment, where sales grew 48%. So yeah, james, it looks like Acast are doing the right things, moving forward quite nicely.

Speaker 1: 7:18

It does. Yes, lots of positive stories about Acast. I have to have a bit of a chuckle about the PodTrack thing. You just mentioned that ACAST was number one global podcast publisher in March, according to PodTrack, and ACAST were thrilled, of course, with that. If you look at any emails from ACAST then you can see that at the bottom of the email it says number one, or at least it used to until yesterday, because PodTrack released its rankers for April and iHeart, it seems, have woken up and gone. Can we be in the global list as well? Oh, dear Please, dad, can we be in the global list as well? And so now, weirdly enough, iheart is now listed in the global ranker and it's over 50% bigger than Acast. So, sadly, iheart is now number one for podcasts once more. Globally, acast has slipped to number two.

Speaker 1: 8:13

Other things coming out of that pod track numbers, by the way Libsyn debuting as number three publisher in the US, that is Libsyn Ads, of course, not Libsyn. The podcast host, the Daily, is number one again, beating NPR's News Now as well. So you know plenty of stuff coming out of that. But yes, so you know. But even and I thought that it was funny that those PodTrack numbers came out the day after ACAST's financial results, so it allowed ACAST to claim that they were number one globally, which they were for 24 hours. And then, of course, iheart comes to reign on that parade. But I think, yeah, it's really interesting.

Speaker 1: 8:57

Average revenue per thousand listens and I wish every single podcast company would release that figure, because that's a great figure Average revenue per thousand listens increased to $34.30. Last year it was more than $10 lower. So Acast have done a very good amount of increased revenue there and that has been helpful for them because that has helped in terms of the number of listens. That has dropped year on year because of iOS number of listens that has dropped year on year because of iOS 17. It's dropped 12% year on year, but Acast is still doing very, very well in terms of the revenue. So, yeah, I thought that was a good thing.

Speaker 4: 9:37

Yeah, some of the other standout numbers $350 million paid to creators and over 1.1 billion listens. So you know well done. We had ross on for the 10 year anniversary a couple of weeks ago and so you know it always sounded like the figures were going to be good. Anyway, he sounded very positive and upbeat about what was going on within a cast. So the figures result in what he was thinking, I think. Think.

Speaker 1: 10:03

Yes, no, I think so. I don't know if you saw the video that Emily and Ross Emily, the financial director, and Ross recorded. That was posted on LinkedIn, but it was very clearly done. I thought they were in two entirely separate rooms, but it was very clearly done with just one camera, and so a little bit of forced. Well, Emily, I think you've got some more numbers for me, haven't you? And we're going to share with you our Q1 2024 results and what a great one it was Em. And then an edit, and then Emily appears, but she didn't manage to get the word smorgasbord into the release this year, which she did last year, which I thought was brilliant.

Speaker 4: 10:50

We used to play a game like that when I was in Microsoft. I used to be one of their presenters, and one of the sales team would sneak a word in just before you presented and if you could get that word into the presentation you'd win a tenner or something like that. I reckon smorgasbord was the word that Ross gave her. Go on, if you can get that into the financial results, I'll give you a tenner.

Speaker 1: 11:13

Yes, I'm sure, absolutely. I have worked for places where I think there was an attempt to get I can't remember who, but you know Taylor Swift song titles into a presentation for a company meeting and you're there thinking, oh, really Okay. But yeah, so good for ACAST, some good numbers coming up there.

Speaker 4: 11:35

Now, last week we had Kevin Finn from Buzzsprout on to talk about a new feature they launched called Funmail. Funmail is now live for all paid accounts on Buzzsprout. What is Funmail? Remind everyone.

Speaker 1: 11:49

James. Well, so it's a link, and there is a little link in our show notes, if you want to click on that, and what that will do is that will send us a message. And the way it sends us a message, which is quite interesting, is it sends us a text message, or rather, it sends Buzzsprout a text message through your text messaging app, because 95% of all podcasts are listened to on a mobile device, so, of course, that makes perfect sense. And then that text message automatically gets sent through and routed through to us and it then pops up on our phones as alerts, which, I have to say, I was there thinking, you know, I mean it's a nice idea, but I don't suppose it'll go anywhere. But you know, ok, we'll talk about it. And then, waking up the next morning to see so many messages on my phone, so many messages, I thought, wow, it's quite a success, isn't it?

Speaker 4: 12:48

Yeah, I'm going to get the word curmudgeon in for you there. Oh, curmudgeon, yes, you can look it up, anyone if you don't know what it is. But I think you were being a bit of a curmudgeon there, james.

Speaker 1: 13:00

I mean, you know, I was being very supportive of our sponsor, very supportive of it, but I was there thinking, is this the best that we can do? But actually the proof is in the pudding, as they say. Just the amount of messages that we got is quite something. We'll go through those in just a second. Yeah, it's built on Twilio and it costs about 79 cents for each message. So you know, it's not. No, it doesn't. It costs 0.79 cents each message. It doesn't cost 79 cents for Buzzsprout. Can you imagine?

Speaker 4: 13:34

Shall we read some of the thumbnail that we got then, james, yes, let's read some of that.

Speaker 1: 13:40

What I love is it says where the text has come from. It says the last four digits of the mobile phone number, which we're not going to read out. And yes, so here's one from the UK. I suspect that this is from Mark. Asquith, friend of the show.

Speaker 1: 13:58

And it says Sam, I am suspicious of James's dismissive attitude to the force Might be Sith, Keep monitoring. And attitude to the Force Might be Sith, keep monitoring. And return to Rebel Base. Yes, if you remember, this was right at the beginning of last week's show where I was very you know, there you were with your may the fourth be with you.

Speaker 4: 14:16

Nonsense, and I was very dismissive of it and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans. And to all Star Wars fans, may the fourth be with you tomorrow, gosh. Rather sniffy old chap.

Speaker 1: 14:28

Rather sniffy. I think, commotionally, is the phrase you were looking for there.

Speaker 4: 14:35

Yes, Can I just say podcasting 2.0 is the rebel alliance. I wonder if that makes Adam the Yoda. And then I looked up a few Yoda quotes. When you look at the dark side, careful you must be, for the dark side looks back James.

Speaker 1: 14:49

Yes, yes, Tipping. You must not use the word Tipping, no.

Speaker 4: 15:01

What else?

Speaker 1: 15:01

have we had Phoenix, arizona. Hola, james, I hope you get a lot of messages today. Thank you, evo Terra, I'm sure that's him. Denver, colorado. Hey, james and Sam. Pod News Weekly Review is my favourite industry show. Education and entertainment are my favourite combination in podcasts. With the Pod News Weekly Review, I always have an inquisitive no-shit moment and a couple of laughs. Thank you from. Oh, it's from Rocky Thomas, she's a rock star at Soundstack. You from oh, he's from rocky thomas. Uh, she's a rock star, uh, at soundstack. Uh, ps, this feature is pretty cool. Kudos to buzzsprout. Well, excellent. Thank you very much, rocky.

Speaker 4: 15:30

That's very kind of you, excellent uh, somebody in australia said love your work. Thank you, keep it up and go podcasting go podcasting idaho.

Speaker 1: 15:38

May the fourth be with you, sam from jordan. I think that's jordan from, yes, uh, buzzsprout. I'm guessing. Either either the think that's Jordan from Buzzsprout, I'm guessing, either the Jordan I know from Buzzsprout or the Jordan I know from Spotify. One of the two, no, she would have been using the Q&A that we studiously ignore. Yes, one from Jacksonville in Florida. May the fourth be with you. That's from somebody else from the Buzzsprout team. Maybe this is just all Buzzsprout people.

Speaker 4: 16:09

I don't know Tennessee. I started listening to your show. I'm a Buzzcast listener and I find it so valuable to get the UK and European perspective as a US resident. Keep up the great work.

Speaker 1: 16:19

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. One from Albin Brooke from Jacksonville, florida. I couldn't stop laughing at James's hatred of Star Wars. Yeah well, there you go, anton, from the UK, the United Kingdom, great Britain and Northern Ireland. Memo to Buzzsprout. You can just shorten that. You know Love the show and newsletter chaps Massively helpful for me as a publisher. Chapters or timestamps would be a great addition. Have you not looked? There are chapters and timestamps in there. That's why we say at the beginning in the chapters today Would be a great issue.

Speaker 1: 16:55

It would be a great addition, so it's easier to choose stories and segments. Why does Anton not think that we have chapters? Is he listening on Spotify? Well, if you use an old podcasting 1.0 app, I suppose you wouldn't see chapters.

Speaker 4: 17:11

Yes, do you not? Do you not see the chapters in apple podcasts? Yeah, you do. Yeah, they're still there. I know, okay, I can't, I can't call them that anyway, anton.

Speaker 1: 17:16

Um, yes, they are there in all supporting podcast apps. Hello, it's jones. From the edit here it turns out anton was using spotify. Spotify doesn't support chapters normally. Oh well, there we go. Another one from australia, david clark, aka the late bloomer actor podcast. Hey, team pod news are hoping I'm the first to say hello, guys, buzz brown's new text system. You weren't, but thank you, david, that's very kind of you.

Speaker 4: 17:42

Kevin Finn sends us one great episode this week. Uh, thanks for having me on. Hope you're enjoying Farm Mail. We are, kevin, and the only bit I've got as a bit of feedback is please don't tell me you were reading yours by the swimming pool in the warmth, when it's raining and miserable here in the UK, because that was just that was just like me going. Oh great, another reason to move. Yes.

Speaker 1: 18:06

Well up in the snow in Vernon in British Columbia. I'm sure it's still snowing there, isn't it? May Justin from Transistor do emojis work? He says with an emoji of a Canadian flag yes, justin, they do York from Ottawa in Canada. Thanks for the insider info of how Canadian flag. Yes, justin, they do York from Ottawa in Canada. Thanks for the insider info of how to make my show Welcome to Earth Stories sound better. You two are the best. Ps. I love your British sense of humour.

Speaker 4: 18:35

Yeah, he must be mean. Now, james, can't be you, you're a Nazi.

Speaker 1: 18:40

And the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland again, I'm going to keep on reading the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Again, I'm going to keep on reading the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Speaker 4: 18:47

Every single time I see this. Can we have a Wyoming-y a trois?

Speaker 1: 18:51

point. Whoever this person is says would be cool if this was two-way.

Speaker 4: 19:01

Now, I did ask Kevin that and Kevin made a great point about why it shouldn't be two-way.

Speaker 3: 19:07

He did. If we find that two-way communication is really important, it's something that people want. Of course we could explore that, but for right now, we're really excited about letting the audience connect with the podcaster and the podcaster. They already have their way of connecting with their audience and that's doing your show. Yes.

Speaker 1: 19:22

And I do notice a lot of miserable people in the Buzzsprout Facebook group at the moment going. But it's only one way. I want to reply and you're there thinking really, but yeah, no, I think it's great, I think it's really cool. Yes, making it two-way might be interesting and there may be a way of. I don't know how premium texts work in the US, but there may be a way of you know paying some money that way as well. I don't really know.

Speaker 1: 19:51

When I worked for a radio station, Sam, about 10 or so years ago in the UK, one of the things that we did is we put a charge of 25 pence on a text. So if you wanted to text us, then absolutely fine, but we would automatically send you a text back that said thank you so much for texting the radio station and this text would cost you 25p. And I wonder whether there's options there to. I wonder whether texts work that way in the US. I'm sure that they probably don't. But you know, premium texts might be a good way of you know helping a show and almost turning these messages that we've just been reading out into kind of booster grams, because you could kind of get some money out of there into kind of booster grams because you could kind of get some money out of there.

Speaker 4: 20:46

No, I actually think we were talking about it just off air. You know why? Why did we get so many when you know we get a good handful of boost grams and that's great and we, we still want those. But why do we get so many? Was it because it was just new? We'll see next week, but I think it's also frictionless, I you know people can just go. Oh yeah, it's a text quick and it works in everything.

Speaker 1: 21:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah and it works in everything. Now, I thought that was really interesting and interesting. Uh, you know, almost interesting that you, you know, anybody, could put an email address in your show notes and that would obviously open the email, but for some reason, uh, the messages app is easier than sending an email, so yeah, I think kevin said it as well in the interview.

Speaker 4: 21:27

He said you know, if it was an email, maybe you feel like you've got to write a little bit more. It feels like you've got more space to fill, so maybe you feel a little bit more.

Speaker 1: 21:35

Uh, you know, oh no, maybe I won't send an email then yeah, maybe it's that we also worked out 25 pence in terms of an incoming SMS message. We worked out that that's about 500 sats. So yeah, so no. All interesting stuff, so yes, but fan mail very successful, so hurrah, and it'll be fascinating to see how many we get this week. If you do want to send us a fan mail, then you'll find that message is in our show notes. Just click on the link and away you go.

Speaker 4: 22:11

Now, I was having a scam round, as I do, and I found this report from Chris Peterson. He's a founder and CEO of Download Media and he asked a really simple question to 50 CEOs in the studio and ad networks. He said which podcast platform will be the most important in five years? What do you think? The answer was James.

Speaker 1: 22:35

Don't know. You would assume that Spotify is in there. Don't tell me. They were all saying YouTube, were they?

Speaker 4: 22:41

Well, they said. The consensus among the industry leaders was clear the future of podcast platforms is in the hands of Spotify and YouTube, which was the overwhelming endorsement Apple underperformed he says underperformed but when you look at the numbers, it was basically Spotify would be 50% of the respondents, youtube was 48% of the respondents and Apple just 2%.

Speaker 1: 23:04

2% said Apple Gosh wow, wow, that's really interesting. Which podcast platform will be the most important? And only 2% said Apple. So one of the things I'm doing at the podcast show in London I am the first speaker there I get to speak for 20 minutes or so, and part of that is going to be having a look back at the previous year which won't come as any surprise if you're listening to this show and the other half is actually going to be having a look at a day's worth of downloads to OP3, because it turns out that OP3 is now quite big, has over 600,000 downloads in one day, and I've got a chunk of data there which I'm busy sort of having a play with and learning all kinds of things from that data.

Speaker 1: 24:05

And so one of the sets of slides that you can expect is talking about different app platforms in different countries. So here's a sneak preview Spotify and Apple are relatively neck and neck in most countries, as you would kind of expect. So you know, relatively neck and neck in terms of total downloads. In Mexico, 90% of downloads go to Spotify, 90%. So it's just massive, real, real big difference.

Speaker 1: 24:36

And what I was curious about is, even if you look into somewhere like Mexico, actually iPhone downloads are still being done by Spotify. You know it's not a case of Spotify is the only one that works on Android. It's a case of people are preferring Spotify to Apple podcasts, even on their iPhone, which, again, I found fascinating. So more of this, more of this data at the podcast show in London in the next couple of weeks, which is great because it also means that I can preset that for that day's newsletter, so that I've actually got something there and ready and waiting, because by heck I'm going to be tired there and ready and waiting, because, by heck I'm going to be tired.

Speaker 4: 25:22

That's why I'm doing that. One of the things they said is they are mirroring what you've been saying for the last three years, that, um, it's probably to do with the unavailability of apple on android. And again, they're saying exactly what you've said. They don't understand why, because their distribution strategy, when it's an apple tv, is available on android as, but apple podcast isn't, um, you know, and they don't see any reason why apple wouldn't do it. So again.

Speaker 1: 25:49

Um well, I'm sure, I'm sure they're working on it.

Speaker 4: 25:51

They're not stupid, yeah well, you say that, james. You know you've been telling apple for what three years now to do it on Android. You know Apple's monopoly of Flash 2.0 apps. Basically, if we can break them up, flash 2, I'm going to keep calling it now. But what I do think is it's an overall picture for Apple. Actually, we've seen, I think announced recently iPhone sales are falling. I don't think anyone's going to be buying an iPhone 16 in a flash. Um, basically, they've got 1% battery improvement or camera improvement. I mean, would you upgrade? You know, if you had to pay, james?

Speaker 1: 26:28

No, well, I I think the secret with Apple and I hope that they won't do this because, um, they strike me as being a decent-ish company Um, but I think that the secret with Apple is to do what Google do and only give updates to iPhone for three years and then that's it. That's all you get. We'll do security updates, but you won't get the latest version of iOS, and so, therefore, you have to upgrade with some new hardware. That's how Pixel phones work, much to my irritation, and so, essentially, that meant that every three years, or every four years, you had to buy a new Android phone because, all of a sudden, some of the apps that you were using wouldn't work on the old version of Android that you had, which was quite a frustration version of Android that you had, which was quite a frustration. And if Apple really wanted to boost their iPhone sales, then that's the first thing that they would end up doing, but I hope that they don't.

Speaker 4: 27:28

I actually hope that they get off the fence and really embrace podcasting 2.0. I mean, you know they gave us or threw us a bone with transcripts but, as everyone knows, even Kevin was talking about it last week to me. You know, the Buzzsprout transcripts aren't being used in Apple, they're just being rejected. They're not good enough, according to Apple. So you know, and Kevin said he was hand coding one just to make sure that it met any requirements and it still didn't pass.

Speaker 1: 27:57

So you know requirements and it still didn't pass. So you know, yeah, I am seeing that as well and I'm seeing that some of mine go through, some of mine don't. There are a few things that I have discovered about some of the transcripts that are produced by some of the software that we have actually aren't correct, you know, in terms of the spec. It turns out that the ampersand sign, for example, which is a thing, doesn't work in a VTT file and you have to encode it in a different way. So but, yes, I agree, it's not very clear when a transcript has been accepted and when a transcript, and why a transcript has been, you know, denied. So, yes, I can well see that.

Speaker 4: 28:43

Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to work out in the last few years and this is a genuine question to you, james what has Apple actually done with podcasting? I mean delegated delivery fail, channels fail, subscriptions fail, spatial audio fail and transcripts are a proprietary technology because they're not really using anything. What has Apple actually done to move the needle in podcasting?

Speaker 1: 29:07

What has Apple done for?

Speaker 4: 29:08

us Well yeah.

Speaker 5: 29:09

I mean what have they done really Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system and public health.

Speaker 1: 29:19

What have the Romans?

Speaker 1: 29:20

ever done for us. I think that Apple do a good job in terms of you know. I mean, it's still the number one or the number two podcast app in most countries, so it's still very important in terms of that. I think the transcript thing has been genuinely a good thing. The fact that they do support RSS transcripts in the issues with them not accepting some of them is going to be a quality control thing, and I think, you know, it'd be helpful if they were a little bit more transparent in what they were blocking and what they weren't. But I think that that's been, you know, very useful. They weren't, but I think that that's been, you know, very useful.

Speaker 1: 30:03

But I also get the feeling that it's a small team They've had to get rid of very clearly, they've had to get rid of the PR person that they had, so they now have a PR person who is very much shared with the rest of the PR, you know, at Apple, rather than a bespoke PR person specifically for the podcasting division, and I think that that's harmed Apple over the last five or six months. But I think that the other thing that's really harmed Apple over the last five or six months, apart from not supporting Android has been the big mistake that they made with auto downloads and took the entire industry by surprise, and that isn't really the sort of thing that you expect a partner to do, so I think that they've lost a lot of goodwill by doing that.

Speaker 4: 30:54

Well, I think last week we reported Buzzsprout's figures that you know, Spotify were above Apple for the first time. Reported Buzzsprout's figures that Spotify were above Apple for the first time, and it looks like Libsyn's also now reporting that Apple podcasts have dipped below 50% for the first time.

Speaker 1: 31:06

Yeah. So Libsyn, very much a heritage podcast host, similar to Blueberry, so therefore they see an awful lot more downloads on Apple podcasts. But even Libsyn, seeing that Apple podcasts has dipped below 50% for the first time, spotify also having the highest figures that they have ever had on there. And some data from PodTrack about YouTube which I thought was interesting. So PodTrack's global ranker that we mentioned earlier, that Acast was number one in for a month. That global ranker also includes YouTube views and I thought that that was interesting.

Speaker 1: 31:44

Iheart sees 16% of its consumption from YouTube, libsyn Ads sees 11%, sonoro just 3%, but Daily Wire sees a quarter of its consumption there and YouTube is responsible for 61% of Paramount's consumption, which is really high. And the way that PodTrack is counting those apparently, is that a YouTube playlist must correspond to podcast content that is distributed via RSS. So it's very clear in terms of you know it is a podcast in inverted commas an RSS delivered podcast, which they are also counting YouTube numbers for. And I think I mean even for iHeart, 16% of its consumption is coming from YouTube already in comparison to, one would assume, somewhere like 30% for Apple, 40% for Spotify and of course you know the iHeart app will be doing very well for them. So you know again trouble ahead for Apple.

Speaker 4: 32:46

One would one would assume. Yeah, and don't talk about the Apple iPad app advertising the crushing of life out of creativity. I don't know if you saw the.

Speaker 1: 32:56

Yes, I thought. And so so somebody. I mean yes, I thought, so somebody. I mean such a tone deaf ad of basically taking beautiful creative things pianos and musical instruments and kids toys and crushing them. Such a tone deaf ad. And then someone else.

Speaker 1: 33:15

The point, if you haven't seen it, is that the iPad, the brand new iPad, is very thin. No one cares, but apparently that's the point. Someone on Twitter has done something which I thought was very clever. They just ran the ad backwards. And when you run the ad backwards, it's a lovely ad. It makes exactly the point and it's a lovely ad and it's really nice. And you see all of these beautiful things that are inside your iPad turn into a beautiful piano and a beautiful you know, and you know minions and kids toys and all that kind of stuff, and it's a really nice ad. But I think such a tone deaf ad from Apple, I would be surprised if it lasts the weekend. I think that whoever it is at Apple who said yes to that I mean, apple is the creator's brand, right? If you're a creator, you will use Apple equipment more than anybody else. So I think from that point of view, it's tremendously, you know, tremendously high.

Speaker 4: 34:22

Yeah, I'll look in the jobs later to see if the marketing director's role is available. It should be.

Speaker 1: 34:28

I mean frankly, frankly, I'm massively surprised, yeah, that they actually got away with, yeah, that they actually ended up doing that. But there we are. What else has been going on?

Speaker 4: 34:40

Well, I'm very pleased to announce that I've launched a new product called Sam. No, not me. Okay, mamma Mia have launched a product called Sam. What's Sam James?

Speaker 1: 34:48

Yeah, I thought this was a really, really clever idea. So basically they sent me a release and they basically say they have made a voice it's a cloned voice for their advertisers. So basically, if an advertiser wants to come along and say you know, we've got, you know, we've got a sale on this weekend, can you put some ads across the Mamma Mia podcast network, Then up until now they would have had to have booked a voiceover and set a voiceover in a studio and recorded something and blah, blah, blah. Now it's literally just typing in some words into a cloned voice. And they've used all of their female announcers. It's a female led podcast network. They've used all of their female announcers, blended them all together into this cloned voice called Sam, and I thought that's really interesting and so I sent them a quick email Sam and you, sam. This gets confusing, I know.

Speaker 1: 35:51

And I said how was Sam put together? And if it's as real time as you say, is there any chance that you can get Sam to say hi to us? And within 10 minutes they had sent me back an email and the email said Hello Pod News Sam here.

Speaker 5: 36:08

I'm made up of many of the brilliant voices across the Mamma Mia podcast network, the voices that millions of women trust and see as friends. Brands can use me to talk to the millions of listeners on Mamma Mia's podcast network in a way that cuts through and gives more engagement and effectiveness than a traditional radio ad or generic programmatic ad. To find out more, reach out to the Mamma Mia team.

Speaker 1: 36:30

And Mamma Mia are supporters of the Pod News newsletter. So I was thinking that sounds a bit like an ad and then I thought, well, they are supporters, they could probably get away with it. But what do you think of that? It's pretty good.

Speaker 4: 36:43

Yeah, I mean for a tone deaf bloke over here in the UK that sounded like a normal Australian woman, so yeah, I mean and to me as well.

Speaker 4: 36:50

Yeah, I mean, you and I have both been in radio you longer than me but I mean I remember the idea of having to create an ad would take forever and a day, as you said, getting a voiceover artist, getting script written, blah, blah, blah, and then getting it recorded. I mean, I've seen tools out there now that you know um are promoting oh, just, oh, just pick an AI artist, pick a voice, write a script, chuck it in and we'll do a video for you, you know, or an audio advert. I mean, would you, you know? I remember six, 12 months ago you probably poo-pooed it. You go, that'll never work. What do you think now? Then?

Speaker 1: 37:30

Yeah, I mean, I think there are some really smart tools out there I don't know if you've, you know and tools that will do a really good job. There's a, so I'm currently doing a talk which you'll be able to see at the podcast show, which is tools. You know, tools from podcasting that you can use and it's really meant for radio companies, but I'll be doing it there as well. And there's one tool that Eleven Labs has put together and the way that their tool works. They do an awful lot of clone voices and things like that. So the way that their tool works is you go onto their website.

Speaker 1: 38:10

The problem with clone voices, of course, is that you know you've got the whole timing thing, that you would like something to be timed exactly right. So and Clone Voices are very difficult to teach you know how to how to time something correctly. So if I go onto their website and I'm on their website right now I can click the record audio button and I'm going to ask it to say the following. He says, pressing the record button. Now, this is what I would like to be said, but I would like it to be said in a female voice. Yes, that would be great. So I've done that, and so you press the button and it will then take my voice, the voice that I have just recorded in there, and it will end up making that into a little clip of audio in exactly the same way that I just read it. So here's that audio.

Speaker 2: 39:10

This is what I would like to be said, but I would like it to be said in a female voice. Yes, that would be great. I mean, that's incredible isn't. It Isn't that amazing, isn't that?

Speaker 1: 39:21

amazing. And again, you wouldn't know that that was a clone voice. I mean, that just sounds as normal as any other voice sounds.

Speaker 4: 39:30

It's getting clever. What's the expression? It's as bad as AI will ever be today.

Speaker 1: 39:36

Yes, exactly, exactly. You know, these tools are the worst that they will ever be today. They will only get better, and that voice is indistinguishable from, you know, from a human voice.

Speaker 4: 39:52

I think so yeah really really clever, really cool. Better find another job then, because you've got Sam now and I better go under the name of Seth.

Speaker 1: 40:00

Again, again.

Speaker 4: 40:04

Right moving on before. I lose my job Right. Iab 2.2 released their podcast measurement guidelines. I'm going to go make a cup of tea while you tell everyone about it. James, go for it.

Speaker 1: 40:17

Well, so there's the IAB podcast guidelines. Version 2.1 has been out for a couple of years for three years in fact and they've just released version 2.2. Frankly, there's not very much change to it. There's a bit of tightening up of some of the words and everything else, and so really there's not an awful lot of change that anybody needs to worry about. But all of the new certifications will be done under version 2.2.

Speaker 1: 40:42

You might remember earlier on that Spotify left the IAB, so we reported on that a couple of weeks ago. So we reported on that a couple of weeks ago. One of the big additions that they slid in just before they made version 2.2 final is that they slid in a little thing about compliance, because Spotify, because the IAB podcast measurement guidelines are really clear in saying, and I quote to claim compliance with these guidelines, an organisation must go through the IAB Tech Lab certification process and get listed on the IAB Tech Lab website. So if they say that they are IAB compliant, they are now not and someone and hopefully the IAB can come after them and say you're not compliant, they are now not and someone and hopefully the IAB can come after them and say you're not compliant. Look, this is what compliance means, so I thought that that was a very clever plan of theirs.

Speaker 1: 41:42

I now list in the pod news directory podnewsnet slash directory. I now list the version of IAB podcast measurement guidelines that each podcast host is certified to and when that certification was done. There are a couple of people, including our sponsor, who are a little bit late. I think Buzzsprout last certified in 2020, but they are recertifying and as soon as they recertify then that will come through on there. But yeah, I thought some bright moves there from the IAB just tightening up what people can actually claim Well, I think you mentioned that they should do something, so at least they're listening.

Speaker 4: 42:23

Hello, nice to hear you Indeed, indeed. Let's zip around the world a bit, james, quickly.

Speaker 1: 42:30

Yes, let's do that. In the Philippines, lots of people are listening to podcasts every week. Well, 20% of people are listening to podcasts every week, and that's 20% of internet-connected Filipinos, which is still 17 million people. Comedy is the number one. You'll find lots more detail in the Pod News newsletter.

Speaker 4: 42:52

And I'm guessing no, well, I am guessing because I haven't been to the Philippines that Android would be the preferred mobile phone as well. James Hint, Apple hint.

Speaker 1: 43:02

In the Philippines. You reckon yeah.

Speaker 4: 43:06

I'll give you a 50p and a Tim Tam. Bet that it's an Android.

Speaker 1: 43:10

You'll give me a what A 50p and a Tim Tam. Bet that it's an Android.

Speaker 4: 43:12

You'll give me a what A 50p and a Tim Tam bet yeah, yeah, I'll buy you a Tim Tam, you know, because you're short, and I'll give you 50p, you know, before you get over it.

Speaker 1: 43:19

Well, it'll be country code, country underscore code, and the Philippines is PH, I believe. I think that that's probably about right, isn't it? And the figures are Spotify absolutely in the lead, apple Podcasts at number two, chrome at number three, castbox at number four and Fountain at number five, which is always interesting to end up seeing. Now, you didn't ask for that, did you? You didn't ask for agent name, you asked for the device, didn't you? I did.

Speaker 1: 43:54

Yes, device name, and I need to count device name. Isn't it brilliant having this data? You can just go blink, there we go. Apple is number two and Android is number one. Android has more than three times the amount of downloads than Apple in the Philippines, so I look forward to eating my Tim Tam. There you go, there you go. Well, I'll have to bring a Tim Tam now, won't I? So, yes, so they're very high. Windows computer is at number three, as you would kind of expect, and actually Apple computer is like way, way, way down. But yeah, there you go. Isn't it brilliant having all this data and you can just go? Yes, well, I wonder. Oh well, look, there we are, let's find out. Anyway, there we are. What else? What else? What else?

Speaker 1: 44:52

Well, we've got Edison Research revealing some new numbers on May 16, called the Podcast Consumer. That's data on who listens to podcasts. More data, actually from the Infinite Dial there's a free webinar if you want to take part in that Some really interesting data from YouGov, which released data showing the number of regular podcast listeners in countries from around the world. Now, these are people who listen to podcasts for more than one hour a week, and there's some really nice numbers that came out of this, so rather fun to take a look at.

Speaker 1: 45:29

What surprised me is that South Africa is really high, as well as Saudi Arabia and Egypt places where you wouldn't necessarily expect podcasts to be massive and Indonesia. By the way, some of this data is only conducted among internet users, so not everybody, but just among people who use the internet, and that's important, I think, particularly for South Africa. But the numbers are very similar to the numbers that came out of Reuters a couple of years ago, which again I thought was interesting in that actually the numbers aren't telling us random you know, random things. The numbers seem to be the same as what we've seen a couple of years ago, just with more countries in them. So good piece of research from you, kampf. There there is one relatively amusing thing, particularly for a British person. Would you like to know that relatively amusing thing?

Speaker 4: 46:24

Go for it.

Speaker 1: 46:24

When you take a look into Europe, then there are lots of countries in Europe, including the UK, which is in the European listing here, as well as other countries like Germany, bulgaria, like Turkey and Argentina. Apparently, argentina is in Europe, according to you, garth.

Speaker 4: 46:45

Hey, hang on a minute. We had Eurovision Song Contest with Australia in it the other day, so come on, anything's possible.

Speaker 1: 46:54

Yes, yes, you know how to bring a man down, don't you? You know that we didn't get into the final Shh. I didn't know. So, yes, so there we are. And also talking about Saudi Arabia, the biggest podcast ever on YouTube is an Arabic language podcast from Saudi Arabia. Did you know that? I didn't, until you wrote it? No months. It's an interview podcast with a relationship and communication skills trainer, whose name I'm not going to try and pronounce, which is why I haven't written it down here, and I think the previous record was Joe Rogan and Elon Musk. You know, smoking a doobie, smoking a doobie, which had 69 million views, and that was five years ago. So, yeah, so that kind of you know came as a bit of a surprise. Thmania, the podcast hosting company, very keen to point this out to me, of course. But, yeah, who would have thought that both Arabic language content and that sort of thing would do so well on YouTube?

Speaker 4: 48:12

But it clearly is A hundred million people, every woman's going. I told you, just talk to me. Just talk to me. Relationship and communication skills, that's all you need.

Speaker 2: 48:22

Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Speaker 1: 48:26

Events. Well, I won't be in Auckland on Saturday, may the 11th, which is tomorrow. I won't be there because I'm not going, and I was there last year. The New Zealand Podcasting Summit is happening there. It's a very good thing. I gather that Lewis Tennant, who runs the thing, will hopefully be in the US, in Washington, for the big podcast movement later on in the year, so it'll be good to see him over there. Where I will be, though, and where you will be too, is the podcast show in London, may the 22nd and 23rd. You can save yourself some money on selected passes by using the code podnews10 if you wish to do that. You will be speaking, will you not?

Speaker 4: 49:12

I think after my rant last week they rang me and went do you want a slot? Then I went oh, go on then if I have to.

Speaker 1: 49:19

Yeah, go on then, if I have to.

Speaker 4: 49:24

Well, you know, rent a gob. No, I'm looking forward to it. Actually, I'm going to be talking about some of the work of the PSP and podcasting 2.0, and I'm probably going to have a couple of people on stage with me as well. So, um, yeah, looking forward to doing that. So I'll. I'll tell you next week what the exact time is, um, and then I can borrow some slides from you, because you won't be presenting at the same time. So that'll be done, that'll be easy. You can send me some slides over, couldn't you? Uh, james.

Speaker 1: 49:50

Yeah, if I've got any. So yes, very happy to do that.

Speaker 1: 49:54

I'm doing an opening keynote right at the beginning. I'm also speaking about tools and things like that. Right at the end, we are doing a Pod News Weekly Review, which will be live on a stage somewhere, so that will be good. If you come along to that show, then, thanks to our friends at ACAST, sam reckons he's going to give you a free beer. Well, I'm not. I think first come, first served in terms of that, literally, and we're saying that I have yet to actually check this with the organisers because I know that licensing laws may mean that we have to do something else there, but that will be fun. You're talking about Podcasting 2.0 t-shirts as well.

Speaker 4: 50:45

Well, if you come to my seminar and presentation, you'll get nothing to do with it. Look, you can talk about the future, but I'm giving away merch. So yeah, come to mine, you'll find your merch T-shirts. You know, no Tim Tams from me. No, we go full out proper T-shirts.

Speaker 1: 51:03

There we are and thank you to Captivate, our friends at Captivate who are paying for the beers in a super secret Pod News drinks. If you think that you should be going then please do tell us weekly at. Podnewsnet is our email address. But thank you to Captivate. Thank you to Mark and the team for helping with the bar bill for that, and that's a good thing too. Indeed.

Speaker 4: 51:32

Invites are on the way, as they say, now there is also an event up in Sheffield, that's the north of England. For those who don't know, it's run by Dino Sophos and Jamie O'Hare. I will be going to that one. It's on May the 31st. Yeah, so it's called CrossWise.

Speaker 1: 51:53

So I'm looking forward to that. Yes, I'm also in Toronto in Canada for the podcast Power Up Summit on June the 2nd, as well as Radio Day's North America on June the 3rd and 4th. I'm in Orlando in Florida, slightly at the middle of the previous week, so looking forward to doing that. I'm in New York on Monday, the 27th of May, and I was busy trying to work out why I haven't had very many people who've said oh, you're in New York, let's meet up, and the reason why is it's Memorial Day, so nobody will be in New York apart from us tourists. So that was a mistake. But still, there we are.

Speaker 1: 52:28

If you are in New York and you know of a good place that sells coffee or beer, then that will be a lovely thing. James at Cridland is my personal email address. That would be a good thing. And yes, and a few other things going on, including webinars from the Podcast Academy about Podcast Standards Project and Podcasting 2.0, the Berlin Podcast Week, september the 10th to the 15th, and the Global Podcasting 2.0 Festival, which is happening in September. More details on a website, sam, yet or is that website still?

Speaker 4: 53:09

Yes, no, no, it's not quite finished, so, yes, um, I don't want to give that out quite yet. Yes, I've got a few conversations with sponsors to have first right.

Speaker 1: 53:19

It's probably a good idea.

Speaker 4: 53:21

Oh, it's a good idea but can I just point out, listeners, do you know something about these events? James's travel budget and my travel budget are very different. Well, yes, I get to the north of England, you get to the north of America.

Speaker 1: 53:35

Yes, all I can say there is it's not my travel budget, it's a travel budget of many other people, in fact, what I have literally just done this week is in October I'm going to Oslo, stockholm and Copenhagen and the Independent Podcast Awards, which I'm very much looking forward to being there as well in London, and I've managed to book all of those flights and everything else. It's been really easy trying to get three sets of people to pay their little bit for those flights so I can come and speak at their conferences. But still, there you go, but, yes, doing a lot of travel, as ever. Anyway, there are more events, both paid for and free, at podnewsnet slash events.

Speaker 2: 54:25

The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Speaker 1: 54:30

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where we talk. Here's where Sam talks technology. What have we got here, Sam?

Speaker 4: 54:39

Well, every week I do the show notes, chapters, sorry. And when I go and find imagery to support that for the chapter art, I invariably come across a WebP file. I think, yeah, no, I never look at the extension. I thinkably come across a webp file. I think, yeah, no, I never look at the extension. I think, great, I'll add that one. And then in bus route it didn't work. And every week for years and years it didn't work. So I pinged um, tom Rossi and Kevin, and I said, hey guys, any chance you can support webp in chapters. And hey presto, you can now support WebP files in chapters.

Speaker 1: 55:11

Well, there's a thing, so that's good. Does that mean that those images get pulled into the Buzzsprout system and then changed into JPEGs, or are they still WebPs?

Speaker 4: 55:26

Don't know that would be interesting. I have no idea. Don't look at me. I was going to ask you the follow-up question, so WebP came from Google. File works a little bit better.

Speaker 1: 55:36

It's supported pretty well everywhere now. It's taken a long time to be supported everywhere, I should say, but all of the images, for example, that you see on the Pod News website, are WebP if your browser copes with it. So yeah, so it makes sense to end up dealing with all of that.

Speaker 4: 56:24

So hurrah for Buzzsprout adding support there this data that I guess you're going to be talking about at the London podcast show, James. But the one thing that surprised me was the number of podcasts that have the medium equals video enabled as well.

Speaker 1: 56:40

Yes, yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? Yeah, I think John does a very good job of taking a look at all of these new tags and working out which work and which you know all of these new tags, and working out which work and which you know working out how fast they're getting put in there. So, yeah, no, I thought that that was interesting to have a look at.

Speaker 4: 57:01

Yeah, 12,500 podcasts with the medium equals video that's taken. These figures, by the way, are taken from the podcast index database, so that's still pretty good. Indeed, one of the things that came up, peertube, which is the decentralized video platform alternative to YouTube, which is also federated as an activity pub client, launched 6.1 this week. One of the things last week was we talked about Captivate, supporting the alternative enclosure to allow YouTube videos to be linked to within apps. So, for example, truefans does that, I'm glad to say. Now we will, as TrueFans, allow you to put PeerTube videos into TrueFans and link to them as well, so we can now do that one as well. So I'm very pleased.

Speaker 1: 57:51

Very nice. Yeah, that's a nice thing. Other things going on Fountain has added support for Coinbase. Coinbase is interesting in that it is now supporting Lightning payments, if you're interested in that sort of thing, which reminded me to go and have a look at my Coinbase account to realise that I closed it last year. So there you go last year. So there you go, um, which is always nice, yes, um, there's a new uh tag which has been formalized into the podcast namespace, called the podcast publisher tag. What's this, sam well?

Speaker 4: 58:22

the publisher tag is. The idea came from oscar at fountain and davidas at rss blue. The idea was for music artists to be able to put a discography together and then if any new tracks were added to that, you would be alerted or informed so you could group together all of your music albums, everything. Because what was happening was an artist might start off on Wavelength, then have another track on RSS Blue, then have another track on LNBs and then have another track somewhere else, and people are like, well, how do I find all your stuff?

Speaker 4: 58:56

Now I think the thing that's interesting we as a group came out with pod roles before publisher feeds came out, and so pod roles was an initial way that actually music artists could group all their content together in one single place, even though they were on multiple different hosts. But then the publisher tag came out as well, and so there is a massive overlap between the two, right, but I think there is a distinction as well. I think a pod role allows you to not only show your own other podcasts, but you can show third-party ones. So, for example, we show the Buzzcast feed within our pod role, so we recommend Buzzcast to all of our listeners as well. But a publisher tag for somebody like you, james, would just be all of the pod news, daily pod news, weekly pod news, extra and any other podcasts. So it's very clearly to do with you as a publisher as opposed to you as a podcast creator saying here are the things I recommend you listen to in a pod role.

Speaker 1: 1:00:06

Yes, and the benefits of a pod role is that you can link to other people's stuff and other people can link to us as well. So you've got people like the Late Bloomer Actor, podcast Creativity Found, buzzcast itself, the Audacity to podcast. Hello Daniel, podcast Strategy spelled incorrectly because it's in Dutch. So you know a bunch of these additional shows who are linking to us in their pod role as well. So thank you to you for doing that, and I think it's just very useful to be able to have a list of all of the shows from this particular publisher. It's new and helpful data that will help us all.

Speaker 4: 1:00:54

I think, yeah, what's interesting is, you know, again, we've implemented it as TrueFans and, if you want to, so, for example, we've done it not just for music artists, we've done it for podcasters and audio books. So, for example, if you want to, just for music arts, we've done it for podcasters and audiobooks. So, for example, if you want to follow wandering or you want to follow um global, as an example, if they add a new podcast to their publisher feed, you as a fan will then get a notification. So it's not just about the publisher being able to group things together. There is actually value in you as a listener or a fan of a single publication, being able to get to know about what's coming down the road. Yeah, it works really well now helipad has been updated.

Speaker 1: 1:01:39

It's now got a lot of new um things in there, including a new settings page and a new true fans logo, which, which is very exciting. What does the new True Fans logo look like, sam I?

Speaker 4: 1:01:48

don't know. I was very excited. Thank you, Eric PP. We didn't have one in there clearly before, so I didn't even know about it.

Speaker 1: 1:01:57

But there you go. So yes, so it's always nice to see an update to that as we speak. I've just run the update, so that should be nice, and there is. There's a new, beautiful, beautiful True Fans logo in there, which is your pink person rather than anything else. So that's a nice thing, so hurrah.

Speaker 4: 1:02:25

But the biggest update, and the one I'm most excited about, is the auto-verb. Now, one of the things that we have with micropayments are something called a TLV record, which is just a receipt in effect of payments. So if somebody boosts or somebody streams, you as the creator will get a record of that who did it, how long they did it, how much they paid you, all those things. One of the verbs that was in that TLV record was called auto, and most people don't use it, but we at True Fans do. So I do not like the way that the industry has subscriptions and I don't like the way the industry has paywalls.

Speaker 4: 1:03:08

So what we did was we created something called True Fan Support. So I do that for the Pod News Daily, I do that for Podcasting 2.0 and many other podcasts that I listen to. What it means is I can say turn a button on in True Fan and I can then say when you produce a new episode, I will instantly pay you the full value of that episode. Now the value is basically whatever I believe my sats per minute is. That's fine, that's my choice Times, the time of the episode, and I pay you that in advance of even listening to it. It automatically gets paid to you, and what's nice now is that you, adam and anyone else who's now got the update to Helipad can see that payment. Then, yeah, it comes through as a TrueFund support payment. So, yeah, thank you very much, eric.

Speaker 1: 1:03:56

Pp Nice, yes, and it's great to see a lot of work being put into that app. It's a really useful app, which is nice.

Speaker 2: 1:04:04

Boostergram. Boostergram Corner app which is nice.

Speaker 1: 1:04:11

Yes, it's our favourite time of the week. It's Boostergram Corner, where, hopefully, you press that boost button in your modern podcast app and it comes back with lots more information. We've got a ton of boosts this week, haven't we?

Speaker 4: 1:04:25

We have Gene Bean talking about the OpenGraph, as we just were. That OpenGraph audio tip is a great one. I'm likely going to have to look at that too. Thanks, and that's a row of Dux2222 from Gene Bean.

Speaker 1: 1:04:39

Indeed. One of the things that Helipad now does is it has little icons next to boosts showing you exactly all of the numerology behind all of these numbers. By the way, so in case you've ever been confused at some of the numbers of SATs which are sent through, we have all of the names, which is very fancy. Dwev has sent through 2,000 SATs. Great interview with Kevin Sam asking the same questions I did when I heard about fan mail. There you go. There's a thing. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 1:05:14

1,000 sats from Cy saying you talk a lot about Apple opening up their data, building podcast apps for non-Apple devices and capitalising their market share against Spotify. But what is their incentive? They can't monetise through ad revenue, whereas Spotify have a reliable paywall that commercialises podcast content. How much do Apple even make through their podcast subscription model? Great idea on the virtual event in September. See you there and at Podcast Show London next week.

Speaker 1: 1:05:42

Apple does make a substantial amount. I mean they make 30% on all of their paid podcast subscriptions. So you've got that sort of side of it. Apple do sell advertising in some ways, and you could see that Apple could make a little bit more of that if they were in Android as well, but yes, I do take your point that it is easier to see a return for somebody like Spotify, who sell advertising within the app, than it would be for Apple. I think if you're asking me why Apple hasn't launched in Android yet, I think I would answer that by saying look, apple don't want to give Google 30% of all of the money from a podcast subscription. That puts Apple into a very difficult place. So that's what I think actually is going to be the case.

Speaker 4: 1:06:35

But anyway, si, thank you for that. Well, I was going to say, I mean, one of the things I've banged on about, and no one else cares, is that Apple should put podcasts behind their subscription, just like Spotify has. And what I mean by that is, you know, if you pay your Apple Music and you pay your subscription for Apple Music, you get podcasts. Rather than podcasts being totally free, apple skews the market, spotify they're totally free as well.

Speaker 4: 1:07:01

No, but they can add supported right. Apple don't have ads. I mean another Apple failure. I failure, I ads, if anyone remembers them.

Speaker 4: 1:07:08

Um, look, apple skewed the market because anyone can get a podcast for free through apple. Everyone else has no chance really. Or charging, I mean value, for value is there because people out of their, you know, generosity will pay you, as a creator, some money, but the reality is, if they don't want to, they just go to Apple. Oh, I'll just go and listen to it on Apple for free then. And that Pavlovian behaviour that Apple's created in the market is what skews podcasting, If they didn't make everything free like that and it's the only thing they do make free. So I'm totally weird as to why they do that. They make no money out of podcasting and they make everything free. I mean Mark Asquith did say it the first party data that's available through Apple. If you're not making any money, Apple, then at least give it back to the hosts. You know anyone who does delegated delivery, who supports Apple. Give them back that first party data. At least do something with it rather than leave it, you know, in a server that no one looks at.

Speaker 1: 1:08:09

Yes, no, I would. I would certainly agree with that. I think that Apple should be much more open with the data that they have. I think that would be a very helpful thing. Matt Cundall 5,150 sats. He just says thank you. That's sent to the Pod News Daily because we mentioned one of his shows earlier on this week, the Sound Up show, which has Dave Jackson on there this week, which is a good thing, and Alan C Paul also sending money to the Pod News Daily. He has sent an angel donation of 7777 sats, your pirate voice opening. Ah, yes, this was earlier on in the week for the Pod News podcast. It was a great effort, lol. And thank you for including my Morning Devotions' 1,000th show in the newsletter. So glad we could share the perseverance that one podcaster showed in staying consistent for almost four years. Yes, that's quite the story. So congratulations to them. So what's happened for you this week, sam?

Speaker 4: 1:09:08

Not a lot really. I mean, we released publisher feeds. We've done quite a few things.

Speaker 1: 1:09:13

Are you angry at anything that Google has done this week?

Speaker 4: 1:09:16

No, because I couldn't give a damn about Google anymore. They just really are a basket case. Now I mean, you know, when they change their CEO, it won't be soon enough. They've just closed down Google Fit APIs, so now, in 2025, they're going to break all the fitness devices scales, trackers. You just can't build anything on Google, you can't rely on them for anything. I mean yeah, wow. I mean you know, can they stick with anything for more than five minutes?

Speaker 1: 1:09:44

They are. It's a company just run by people who are excited about flashing lights and have no, uh, you know, I mean, that's one of the things that I've noticed about about apple having a, having an iphone now is that, um, everything that apple does is basically there forever, and I think that's one of the problems that they've got, frankly, with their podcasts app it's there forever. They can't really make very, very fast changes with it because it's there forever and they don't want to get rid of things, whereas Google gets rid of stuff all the time and it's just super frustrating. So, yeah, so Google Fit getting rid of all of its APIs in 2025, which will break all kinds of things of all of its APIs in 2025, which will break all kinds of things. So slow hand clap for Google on that again. You haven't been buying anything stupid on the internet, have you?

Speaker 4: 1:10:37

Oh yeah, fun time. So I've just ordered my new meta. I never thought I'd do that Ray-Ban sunglasses. They come with AI built in.

Speaker 4: 1:10:48

Now, the reason why I'm doing that is because I love tech and secondly, I saw a couple of really cool demos. So, first, they look cool because they are Ray-Bans, they're not Google glasses or some rubbish. And secondly, a friend of mine, mike, went around Mexico with his Ray-Ban sunglasses. He got an early prototype and he literally could take a photo of a building and then the AI would then tell him what that building was and the whole history and everything about it. Or he could take a, you know, he could look at some food, he could look at menus. It was just.

Speaker 4: 1:11:23

It was what I thought AR could be augmented reality and I didn't think it would come in this way, but it looks like it might be a way of the camera element from the sunglasses, which is a 30 frames per second video and a 12 megabit camera, can send stuff up. Meta then basically, with their AI, can analyze it and give you what it is, and it looks pretty cool. So I'm going to try it. It's not expensive but it's worth it. The only downside was I ordered it in the hope that I would have it at the podcast show, and it only comes out on the 28th of May.

Speaker 1: 1:11:59

Oh, that's annoying. I know Well you'll have to come over to Podcast Movement again and do that.

Speaker 4: 1:12:06

That'll go with the family to greece? No, you know, yes, that's probably it. So, james, what's happening for you this week, mate?

Speaker 1: 1:12:14

well. So I've been doing a few little uh things. I've just added a new um podcast app to the pod news podcast pages, which is called pod engine. I also noticed that curio caster has a brand new logo, which is much nicer. They've changed the sort of the weird sort of smoky sea into a little dragon, which is very fancy. It looks much the same, but it's about a 10th of the size in terms of an SVG, so I'm delighted about that. So that's all nice and available on the PodNews website. Along with I have just been doing an awful lot of presentations to folks in public broadcasting and everything else, all about AI tools and stuff that they should be aware of. I even wrote a forward for a book which is coming out soon called Prompts for Podcasting and Audio, and it's basically a big book showing you how to use prompts into chat, GPT and that sort of thing to get information out that will help you make a show basically. So, yeah, it's quite a smart little book.

Speaker 4: 1:13:29

Have you got the prompt that says how to make your dog shut up?

Speaker 1: 1:13:32

I mean that would be nice, wouldn't it? That would be really good. The prompt Either that or the prompt for why has nobody else in the family taken the dog in it's dark outside and there might be some cane toads that she can lick and then die. So, yes, bloody dog. Anyway, that's it for this week. I'm just off to strangle it.

Speaker 4: 1:13:55

No, I'm not, obviously I'm not, no no, don't do what the American woman did and shoot the dog.

Speaker 1: 1:14:01

Do you see that?

Speaker 1: 1:14:02

Yes, yes, yes gosh had no value, so I shot the dog, yes, and so she writes that she's a politician, and she writes that in a book and she's a politician, and no one has said to her. You know, that might not be a very good idea. If you're trying to get elected, it might not be a very good idea. In fact, isn't she one of the people who's going for Donald Trump's running mate? Yes, exactly, and you're there thinking but I mean, I suppose you could do anything in the US now and still get elected. So who knows, who knows how any of these things work. Anyway, that's it for this week. You can also listen to the Pod News Daily. You can find that wherever you got this podcast and subscribe to the Pod News newsletter.

Speaker 4: 1:14:45

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Speaker 1: 1:15:06

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Speaker 2: 1:15:16

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Speaker 3: 1:15:22

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Speaker 2: 1:15:27

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