James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, November the 25th, 2022, the

Sheila Dee: 0:04

last word in podcasting news. This is the POD News Weekly review with James Cridlin and Sam Sethi.

James Cridland: 0:14

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

Sam Sethi: 0:16

And I'm Sam Sethi, the host of Sam

James Cridland: 0:17

Talks Technology. In the chapters today, Spotify audio books rolls out to more countries and anchor adds audio

Sam Sethi: 0:25

enhancement. This podcast is sponsored and hosted. Bus Sprout. Last week, 3,600 wonderful people started a podcast with Bus Sprout podcast hosting Made easy with powerful tools and remarkable customer support from your

Sheila Dee: 0:40

daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly

Sam Sethi: 0:43

review. So to kick things off this week, Last week we talked about Spotify rolling out video podcasting, James globally. This week, James, they've rolled out audio books globally, well I say globally in the English speaking languages. It's in the uk, island, Australia and New Zealand. So have you had a look at. The audio books that have been added. James,

James Cridland: 1:06

it's not a great experience, certainly in iPhone by the looks of what you've been sharing with me. Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 1:13

I look, I, I went in, I'm, I'm an audible user, have been for many years and, uh, love listening to audio books. So I thought, oh on, I'll have a look. The first thing I'll say is it's not obvious where it is. It's not on the home page. You have to click on the search page, and then suddenly podcasts and audiobooks and everything else turns up there. In terms of ui, I don't think it's a great first experience, but once you get in there, yeah, it's a, it's very much everything's in there. So I went on my phone, I thought, right, I'll go and see if I can buy something. And of course the message I got was, you can't buy audiobooks in the app. We know it's not ideal. Yep. You have to go back to the desktop and then you have to be jumped out as we thought before. Uh, and then pay for it if you want to pay

James Cridland: 1:58

for it there. And that's an Apple thing, isn't it? It's not really anything else going on there. No. I

Sam Sethi: 2:01

mean, my question. And maybe I'm just being naive, but why doesn't Spotify just remove themselves from the app store and just that the big enough brand? Now everyone knows who they are. I don't know. Just go to, you know, spotify.com and then on there you can download the IIS Android

James Cridland: 2:19

app. Well yes, that would be nice. But you can't side load iOS. You can side load Android and perhaps that's what was something that they might do. Although Fortnite was very um, upset about doing that sort of thing. But you can't unfortunately side load Apple apps cuz you know Tim Apple wants to look after all of that kind of stuff, doesn't he? But yeah, interesting seeing them doing that. Also interesting to see that you're a fan of the Style Council. You're listening in the kitchen to Boy Who Cried Golf . So, uh, so there we are. That's, that's all good. It's not the only thing that, um, Spotify has, uh, launched, uh, this

Sam Sethi: 2:55

week. Is it? No, I, I got a little message saying they've updated notifications. The first thing I went was, oh, did they have notifications before? But they must have done. But I went and had a look in the notifications and it's become much more extensive. You've got obviously music and artists, but pods and show recommendations, audio books. What was also interesting was live streams, virtual events, um, and also, uh, there was a bit there about offers bundles. Um, so it suddenly looked like they were getting more into, oh, and the other one at the bottom, artist and creator merchandise. So suddenly it looks. They've really upped their game in terms of what they're gonna be offering. Yeah. Um, if you are a creator. Yeah. Yeah.

James Cridland: 3:40

Oh, well maybe they're gonna be, uh, promoting, um, all kinds of, you know, tickets and, uh, t-shirts and stuff. I, I think they've been doing a little bit of that, but maybe not in the notifications. So, um, yeah, that's certainly something that Spotify's been doing and also, Anchor has had a little bit of an upgrade as well. They've added audio enhancement to their app. A single tap can automatically reduce background noise while leveling your voice and bringing it to the forefront. Sounds very similar to Buzz Bro's. Magic mastering to me. Um, and probably is exactly the same technology under the hood. Uh, descript also have studio sound in there as well, but, um, yeah. Uh, so. Uh, there we were thinking that, uh, Spotify had finished spending money on their anchor products, but no, they, uh, adding, uh, audio enhancement into there. Well, they've

Sam Sethi: 4:27

added video, haven't they? So it looks like, uh, they are gonna be pushing ahead with whatever anchor is gonna be in the future. Now the other thing I noted, um, was that you had a little tip from Helena talking about, uh, Adobe is also offering a free speech enhancement tool currently available. Yeah. Um, so you can take your MP3 and do something similar, I guess.

James Cridland: 4:50

Yeah, I guess so. That, that's basically how the thing works. It's, um, it's, uh, hiding. podcast.adobe.com. There's a link to it in the top. Um, and seems to be much the same sort of thing. They also have a thing called a mic check tool, which is supposed to tell you whether or not your microphone is any good. I can't get it to work at all, so I dunno whether that's good or bad. Um, uh, who knows? But, uh, they're um, they're sort of slowly but surely adding all of that kind of stuff I last saw. Adobe when I was at the NA show about, uh, three years ago before some thing called a pandemic. I dunno whether you had that sound. Um, but uh, yes, so it would be interesting to see quite what they're doing in terms of rolling stuff out. Uh, but, uh, good for Adobe. Spotify also signing exclusives as well. Um, I always thought that they'd stopped, but no, they're continuing to sign exclusives. Anything goes with Emma Chamberlain. Have, have you ever heard of Emma

Sam Sethi: 5:45

Chamber? No, this one, this one I haven't heard of, but, uh, it, it, the background to it is, it's another loss for the owner of Odyssey. Um, so she's moving across from Odyssey. Um, no, not one of my five level six podcast regular listeners, I'm afraid. No.

James Cridland: 6:03

No, not indeed. She's apparently a big, um, YouTube influencer. Um, and, uh, the show was with, um, Odyssey, as you say, um, with Cadence 13, but, um, it's actually from the Ramble Podcast Network, which is co-funded by, or co-founded by uta, which is, um, big talent agency as well.

Sam Sethi: 6:23

Now, uh, moving on to friend of the show, Dan Ma. At Bumper. He's been busy, hasn't he? With this Apple Podcast tagging that they've been doing in the background, he's now created some new episodic topic maps, which I thought looked really cool when I went and had a look at them. Did you have a play at all, James? Yeah,

James Cridland: 6:41

they did look pretty cool. So this is the topics that Apple is automatically. Working out what you are talking about in your show. Um, and they may be doing that for better search. They may be doing that perhaps for weeding out people who are talking about things that they shouldn't be. Um, but, uh, however it works, what Dan did is he's ended up producing these wonderful spider web maps for every single category in Apple Podcasts. You can see how individual shows. Together both by topics as well as um, by recommendations. So it's a really cool piece of work that, uh, Dan has done. The website is we are bumper.com and

Sam Sethi: 7:18

you just to remind people did something as

James Cridland: 7:20

well. Yeah, I did. So I, um, so yeah, this, uh, was, uh, last week I ended up. Producing something which was a fancy little topics viewer, so you could actually see what Apple thought that your podcast was about, if it's big enough. Um, and um, yeah, so that's worthwhile having a peek at. Uh, you'll find that linked from our show notes. Now,

Sam Sethi: 7:42

uh, we were talking about anchor making a little bit of a comeback with video and, uh, enhanced audio, but Lib Sync seems it's closing its free podcast hosting platform, which it only opened nine months ago. James.

James Cridland: 7:55

Why is that? It did. Um, why is that? Um, so the idea behind Lips in Studio was that it was the tool that they'd bought when they bought SBUs. And it's a tool that allows you to record an intro and record the main bit of your podcast and record an outro and then automatically grab that and stick it up as a, um, as a podcast. And the way that it was gonna pay for itself was through advertising. And there was a space in there for adverts, and that's how Libs. Free podcast host was going to be, and it worked so well. They've closed it down just nine months, uh, after they actually launched it, they've now given the recording tool to all paid lips in plans. So if you are spending money with LIS in, then you can use that particular tool, uh, instead. It's a pretty nifty tool if you don't necessarily want to use, you know, descript or Hindenburg or any of those, um, tools. But, uh, yeah, you know, there, there they are. I think Dave Jackson keeps a list of free podcast hosts that have launched, failed, and Gone Away again. And that's clearly one of them, which I think is, um, is gonna be interesting. Um, but uh, yeah, so they've definitely migrated away. One of the things that I found interesting though is I had a Lip Sync studio account and I tried logging into it and they seemed to have given me a Lips in five account. And there doesn't seem to be anything in there in terms of billing. And I was able to upload a new version of the, um, of that free, uh, free, uh, podcast that I was playing around with. So I'm not quite sure what's going on there. But anyway, you know, it's, Great that companies are trying things and testing things. But uh, that's another free podcast host, which has bitten the

Sam Sethi: 9:38

dust. Now moving on an interesting company that you wrote about called Zeit Pia, I think that's how you'd say it. It's a new kind of podcast network that's using generative AI voices to produce audio news digests. There are some examples of a World Cup News podcast that was totally generated using ai, had to listen to it. It's still fairly robotic, but it's getting better. Mm. Um, did you listen to the business or technology one?

James Cridland: 10:06

Yeah. You know, you, you, you can tell that it's a robot. You can tell that the timing isn't quite right. And there was another one that I linked to another company that's doing something similar with, um, sports, um, uh, results as well last week. You know, it's just that the. The timing isn't correct. I think these services are getting better in terms of pronunciation, but it's just the timing and the phrasing just doesn't really work too well. Um, but, you know, things will get better, I'm sure.

Sam Sethi: 10:33

Yeah. We talked about, uh, previously a company called Verit, a voice AI platform, uh, that does transcriptions as well. Mm-hmm. that raised 250 million to do this, uh, and now has a valu. In less than five years of $2 billion. We obviously have talked in the past about Descripts overdub that you've used. My question, James, to you, is, would you ever use one of these AI tools to produce pod

James Cridland: 11:00

news daily? Um, I don't think I'd produce it. Uh, a full show. Using, uh, that and Pod News daily is only four or five minutes long. Uh, it's quite short stay cause it's Thanksgiving in the us. Uh, who, who to thought it? There's no podcast news going on. Um, but yeah, I wouldn't use it for that. Um, I have used it in the past and I've used it once on this show. And in fact, uh, episode 100 of series one of the old show starts with the date and I managed to get the month wrong and neither of us recognized that when we were recording it. And so I thought to myself, right, well, either I can go and. Back into the office and record me saying that correctly and splice it all in and everything else. But I was using D Descript to edit it and so I just, um, used overdub and you simply could not tell. And the last pod land, it's Friday, the 4th of November, 2022. I'm James Criden. So it's good for one or two words that you fluff not necessarily so great for recording an entire podcast with, yet I don't.

Sam Sethi: 11:58

Maybe they need to add some more ums and hers into the robotic version to make it sound more

James Cridland: 12:03

realistic. Yes, maybe. Or, you know, if they're gonna be, if they're gonna do things like Joe Rogan does, maybe just to add the words Wow. And exactly. Or crazy.

Sam Sethi: 12:14

Um, yes. Uh, there is a study out that says Joe Rogan's podcast, use those words more often than not. Um, and he, he said, my favorite murder, that's another podcast, favors the words. Wow. Totally. And man, totally, totally. Um, it's better than when I was at Microsoft where every word was super. The question is though, I. Do find this interesting. It goes back to what Dan Meisner's doing with what Apple is doing under the hood with keywords. And I think it's great that if you've got transcript, keyword analysis, I mean in the UK just on a, on an aside, they use keyword transcript analysis for Liz Truss, when she was the PN and her word cloud of keywords were keyword was untrustworthy. Yeah. Idiot. Useless. Uh, Richie Sumax Was rich, good, capable? Yes. Um, I would love to do this across. Podcasts. I think it's a fascinating thing to analyze how podcast words

James Cridland: 13:17

are used. Yeah, no, I think it's a really interesting, uh, tool. So again, you know, bringing in more details from transcripts and more people should be doing transcripts is obviously a very helpful thing. Um, I think that would be a super useful thing to end up doing. So, um, yeah, it's a smart, smart tool

Sam Sethi: 13:33

transcript, cloud coming soon. Oh, just by, uh, an aside also, um, I think it was interesting the sun. Did an analysis of Megan Markle, I think you wrote about this. Um, she actually speaks more than her guests on her shows, so, uh, I know they're not a fan of Megan, but you know, that would be a good thing. Yes.

James Cridland: 13:54

I mean, I mean, any, uh, I mean, every day I have to go through the podcast news and about. Talk. 20% of it is all, um, newspapers writing about what Meghan Markle said this week on her podcast, and, uh, how can we sag her off this time? Um, and, uh, yes, this piece, um, somebody basically sat with, um, the Megan Markle Archetypes podcast and, um, with a stopwatch to work out how much Meghan Markle talked and how much the guests that she's supposed to be interviewing talked, um, which is another way of, um, being mean to Megan. Um, I did notice that there was another story today, which I. Bother covering, which is apparently Megan doesn't necessarily interview some of the guests that she's interviewing on the podcast. Apparently. That's, uh, that's a, uh, a producer's job. And, um, she just goes in and records the questions afterwards, which is, uh, busy lady. Interesting. If True lady. But I'm sure

Sam Sethi: 14:47

it's not true. Well, you know, you never know the

Sheila Dee: 14:48

tech stuff, tech stuff. On the pod News Weekly review,

Sam Sethi: 14:53

one of the things obviously we're all watching is the either implosion of Twitter or the, the rebirth of Twitter. I dunno which way it's gonna go, but on a more positive note, uh, no Barring who started Wave, which was sold to Google, has launched Post. Um,

James Cridland: 15:11

why, why, why is this, why is this positive? Another, another, uh, another ceo. Bloke launching another social media thing that he'll, he'll get bored with. Just like Musk. What, what, what's the positive

Sam Sethi: 15:23

there? Well, it contains micropayments. That's the first thing. The second thing, I listen to an interview of No On Pivot this week with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, and they're talking about, uh, keeping the conversation. Um, You know, away from some of the more extreme edges trying to build a reputation, uh, algorithm into it and just simply, oh, great.

James Cridland: 15:46

The way they more do it, more algorithms. That's what we need.. Sam Sethi: Well, reputation algorithm. Who, who, who sets the reputation algorithm then?

Sam Sethi: 15:55

Um, actually the way that it's done by all accounts is user driven. So what he said was ways when they got it had various country leaders and they had area leaders and people in the community would determine what was going on. Um, with roads and local issues and he wants to do the same. He gave an example of, uh, you know, um, the troubles in Myan. He said, look, I wouldn't know what was right or wrong, but if we have people locally who know what's going on, they can validate whether the tweet or in this, I dunno, whether it's gonna be called a tweet or a post, is actually. Taking down or keeping up or, or downgrading in the algorithm or whatever. Uh, it's very early days. There's about a hundred thousand people on a waiting list. There's 3000 people using it at the moment. Um, I guess it's a centralized alternative to Twitter, and I just think it'll be interesting. But the thing I was most excited about, and I'll be honest, was. That they are using micropayment and it looks like a value for value

James Cridland: 16:54

type platform. Yeah. Which will be, um, good. I mean, frankly, I, I couldn't be less interested in some other, um, tech person launching a social network with. Algorithms and with all of this kind of stuff and another centralized system, we've got lots of those. We don't need more of those. It's the last thing that we want. The interesting thing on the other side is that, um, activity pub, which of course is the thing that powers mastered on, but also powers. Oma, uh, that is, um, going to be, uh, also added into Tumblr as well. And Tumblr is massive. It's owned by, um, the good folk at, uh, automatic who also own pocket casts. And, um, you know, uh, it's a very, very large, um, uh, service, uh, if they add, uh, activity pub into that as well. All of a sudden, you know, master Don is going to get much, much bigger and all of the other services which are connected into it. So that's gonna be quite interesting to have a look at too.

Sam Sethi: 17:56

Yeah. Uh, I agree. I haven't actually reactivated my Tumblr account. Do you have one, James?

James Cridland: 18:01

Oh, I, I, I might have had a Tumblr account a long, long time ago, but Yes. Uh, as to whether or not. It, it, it's still there. I would guess. Probably not. Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 18:10

Um, well, on December the 15th, um, Matt Moberg is going to give the state of the word review of the year. So, uh, maybe, and he'll give a little update on Tumblr, I suppose, in there. Cause he's gonna be talking about the future and he's gonna be showing. Graphs and stuff, that's what he's tweeted. Graphs and

James Cridland: 18:28

stuffs and stuff. Um, and uh, I wonder, I wonder how much he'll be talking about pocket casts in there as well. Uh, cause that'll be interesting to, uh, to end up seeing, because obviously, you know, he's owned pocket casts for the last six months now, or, or possibly even longer. So that'll be interesting to, um, see whether that makes it into his state of the word

Sam Sethi: 18:49

now. Todd. Todd, a friend of the show, Todd Cochran. Left a little tweet said With the total freak out on Twitter, it serves people right to have built their marketing empires there. Now, they may once again start to value the value of owning their stack and their own.com, and I just thought James Jobs for their

James Cridland: 19:09

own.com. I own their own.com. It is, it's a chance for me, isn't it? Uh, but yeah, he is absolutely right. You know, uh, it was interesting. I was at a radio station the other day and I was talking to them about, um, you know, what, what's going on in the world in terms of, um, in terms of technology? And they were very excited about. You know, they want to post a bit more to Facebook and they want to post a bit more to Twitter. And I was there saying, why do you want to bolster somebody else's business? Why do you want to push, um, you know, Zuckerberg's business, uh, more? What's the point of that? Oh, well, you know, we should be getting our content on there. No, you should be getting people to listen to your radio station. You. Pumping your content into some other American company's system. And, uh, yes, I was, I was getting a little bit, a little bit grumpy. Um, but still, but there we are. Uh, which is why I think I'm sort of, I'm, I'm rather more interested and excited about things like Masteron, uh, and things like, um, you know, those sorts of, uh, services because, uh, at the end of the day, you are not necessarily building somebody else's empire. Here, you're, you are producing stuff that talks to. Other people. Um, but uh, it can be your own server. And one of the things that I've been spending a lawfully long time today is, um, trying to fix the nightmare that is my MASTERON server got rid of it. Um, and I've got a OMA server on there instead. Uh, you can still find me on Masteron if you search for James Act cri. Dot net, I think, uh, you'll, uh, find me there. But, uh, yeah, so, uh, you, you, you know, I, I'm much more excited about that sort of thing. And what you can then end up doing with, um, those sorts of services is you can do interesting things with RSS feeds as well, which is, uh, which is pretty cool. Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 21:02

So must has just passed over 2 million active monthly users, which is a new record according to Ma Don. So people are voting with their feet. Um, as you said, if you add RSS to the end of someone's account page, you get their RSS feed. And actually, um, Benjamin Bellamy over at Casta Podd said If your podcast is hosted on Casta podd, your audience can listen to your episodes from Maton, but also like share and come at them. And thanks to the podcast Index Cross app comment tag, this could work from any podcasting two. Because obviously Castor Podd is supporting the

James Cridland: 21:39

activity pub as well. Indeed. And it'll be nice to see more, uh, people, uh, doing that. I mean, obviously if you've got access to, uh, something like, um, uh, something like a Macon or a Oma um, uh, instance, then you can actually leave messages. It's far, far easier and simpler that way. Um, so perhaps that's, uh, that's, uh, the plan there. Paul

Sam Sethi: 22:01

doesn't like these RSS feeds, so you can't add them to your Apple account if you have one. And also the other thing to note, if you do start adding James, this is you. Mm-hmm., if you do start adding, uh, or allowing people to add, uh, podcast in the enclosures in Masteron, it adds significant extra cost to your service bandwidth Bill. So, uh, Maybe you

James Cridland: 22:23

won't wanna do that one. It does. Yes. That would be a bad, bad plan. Now,

Sam Sethi: 22:28

other apps that are out there that have been updating, pat Chung, who's the founder of Podding Box, announced they now have automatic audio transcriptions and it's free. He said it's a bit like visual voicemail and it lets you conveniently read. Audio messages from fans before listening to them. So, uh, yeah, pot box is something that we haven't used or I haven't used properly, uh, but it's a way of getting feedback from your listeners who leave little

James Cridland: 22:54

messages. Yeah, cross out comments would be even better, wouldn't it? And Justin Jackson has tweeted, um, from Transistor FM has tweeted now when you upload an MP3 with chapters to Transistor fm. You can insert those chapters as timestamps in your show notes. It's like having your show notes populate automatically. Um, actually that's a really smart, uh, trick. What I've been doing when I've been putting this very podcast onto YouTube is doing exactly that because those. Um, timestamps turn into clickable, uh, links that, uh, you can then use to navigate. Um, and I was having lunch with Nick from VII earlier on this week when I was down in Sydney, and he was pointing out that Spotify does exactly the same. So if you, um, put your, uh, timestamps in as, um, Uh, as, uh, you know, um, information into your show notes, then they'll appear in there as well, which is, uh, quite neat. So perhaps that's something that, um, you know, uh, on certain platforms would be quite useful. So, um, yeah, so worthwhile sort of taking a. Um, a look at and whether or not you could do something quite neat. Uh, and, um, if it's Spotify coming and asking for your RSS feed, then it, it would automatically add those, uh, chapters into a list for you. That would be quite a nice tool that, uh, an enterprising podcast host could end up making. Hmm.

Sam Sethi: 24:17

I like the idea that Justin's put forward. Um, I've said before though, in the past, why do we have three different places that do very similar things? Show notes, uh, chapters and transcriptions Because if you look at a Word document with an outliner, um, the, the chapter headers are the outliner and then the. The content is the actual show notes or the transcription. And often when I do it for this podcast, I'm actually replicating in three different places, similar data, and I just think, yeah,

James Cridland: 24:47

no, and I agree. And, uh, there's a proposal, there's a. Is it a pimp, a proposal for improvement of, of, of podcasting? Uh, there's a proposal in the podcast Index 2.0 thing of a, of a fourth place because obviously we need a fourth place. Um, and, uh, Daniel, Jay Lewis, and a couple of other folk, uh, who are all friends of the show. Um, but they're suggesting that a fourth plate, um, would go in there of things like, you know, telephone numbers and uh, and email addresses and action points and everything else. And I'm, and I'm, um, I'm, I'm in the, in the comments rather grumpily trying to stop that from happening cuz it's a silly idea. But anyway, uh, go into the GitHub and uh, have a play with that if that sounds interesting

Sam Sethi: 25:32

to you. Now Matics got a new version, 8.5 point 12. It's available on the stores for, uh, both Apple and uh, Google. It now includes cloud chapters, uh, which reload Every retirement episode is resume. So well done

James Cridland: 25:49

to Matic. Yeah, which is quite cool in case, uh, somebody has actually updated those, um, chapters to add more information. And pod verse is now available on iPad and Android, um, in a tablet form, uh, that's version 4.7, uh, which you can go and get, which looks, uh, all very fancy and very nice. Um, it'ss surprising how few podcast apps have a. Decent, um, looking, uh, tablet, uh, experience. So, uh, good to see, um, pod verse doing exactly. It's, uh, black Friday, whatever that is. Being English, I've got no idea. But anyway, road is, um, pretty well giving away a piece of streaming software that it, uh, launched a couple of months ago called Unify. Unify is a virtual mixer that allows streamers and games to take full control of their audio. Uh, it's basically rooting and all that kind of stuff, which is pretty cool. Normally it costs, um, Around 70 Australian dollars, uh, for a year, but the price is just one Australian dollar, uh, for the year until November the 30th. So, um, that's quite a significant saving. Um, also Riverside, I noticed while I was logging in to this very podcast is offering half price annual plans. Um, so that's probably worthwhile. Jumping into, and that's already a, a, a healthy saving. Um, so that's worthwhile having a look at. And Studio Dragonfly, who produced the podcast music for this very podcast, uh, produced it for the old show, produced it for lots of other podcasts as well. They're running a Black Friday sale of 50% off everything on their website. Uh, so if you want some production music, if you want some sound effects, if you want some beds, um, then uh, go for your life. Um, get to Studio Drag and Fly. Com, uh, we use them and probably you should too. Mm, black

Sam Sethi: 27:35

Friday. Other deals are available. Now, dunno why I said that. Feel like I feel like I was on the radio again. um, , um, around the world. Very quickly I saw you wrote this James Audio Drama hubs Pod Fest was held in High Wickham, which is literally about 10 minutes from where I live. I knew nothing about this, uh, took over the place at the weekend, and if you want, you can go to POD News and you can see some of. Pictures and highlights, but I don't know who's running it and I don't know what they were trying. Achieve with it, heard nothing about it. Yes.

James Cridland: 28:07

I, I, that was the first that I had heard about it as well. So, um, just seeing the pictures and the highlights, they posted it on, um, the, the on the Fed verse as we have to say these days. Um, and I thought, oh, that, that's very exciting. But, uh, yes, I'd not heard of that. Before either, but all around, um, audio drama and that sort of thing, they should, um, uh, they should, uh, come to pod.events next time and, uh, stick it in there and, uh, who knows? We could have given it a bit more of a push. Um, uh, there's also stuff going on here in Australia News Corp. Is, um, using, uh, apple Podcast paid subscriptions a little bit more. Um, they've put all of their True Crime podcasts into there. Of course, one of their true crime podcasts is the Teacher's Pet, which is a very, very big hit, and some figures have come out from New Zealand as well. The Infinite Dial was published by Edison Research. 39% of adults in the country are monthly podcast listeners, which means that more Kiwis are listening to podcasts than Americans, uh, according to the data. And also 30% are weekly podcast listeners, which is a significantly higher figure than anywhere else in the world. Radio is also doing particularly well. Um, so, so well worth a good. The infinite dial is a really good piece of research that is deliberately built to be comparable across different, uh, countries. So, um, worth a peak of that. And, uh, POD News has some market data slides, which if you're presenting about podcasting, uh, then you can just. Steel and use, uh, and uh, you'll find that, uh, we've updated those as well. Boostgram Boostgram

Sheila Dee: 29:40

Corner, corner corner on the Pod News Weekly review.

James Cridland: 29:45

Yes, it's our favorite time of the show, booster Graham Corner. Now I was listening to Rob and Todd. Um, on the new media show and they were saying that there's, uh, uh, quite a few less boosts going on at the moment, and that's certainly the case for us as well. Uh, we only, uh, got, uh, two sets of boosts and actually one of them wasn't even for this show, uh, was for another show as part of the pod news network called Pod Clock, which if you've not heard it, is a gripping and exciting podcast, uh, which is all about time. Um, it's just me telling you the time. But, uh, Mike Dell, uh, sent 250, sat to it saying, this feed is value for value. Cool. It is that feed is value for value. Why not? So I'm glad that you, uh, had a listen. Um, and, uh, and I told you what time it was. Um, and, uh, Adam Curry has also, uh, sent us, uh, a couple of, uh, boasts as. We said that he might be shouting. Uh, and indeed he was, he was shouting with his boost button and sent us 25,000 sat, and then a further 17 and a half thousand sat, uh, laughing at your Dutch accent, uh, Sam, and then adds, uh, the phrase what? And Le Dig Bantu, which, uh, is, uh, Dutch for What a nice thing you are. I discover. Oh, right. So. There you go. Well, all I'll say is Adam

Sam Sethi: 31:08

Beaked.

James Cridland: 31:09

What does that mean? Thank you. Oh, very good. Dan Ave. I think you mean, but, uh, beaked is, is that a, that's also a thing, is it? We'll find out, won't we? we, we will find out. He'll probably tell us. Uh, thank you so much. If you get value out of this show, then uh, hit that post button. Be very, very grateful. We just share it, Sam and I, it goes nowhere else in the, in the pod news empire. Um, so, uh, that's always a very grateful thing. So thank you so much for that. Oh, we got some people news, haven't we?

Sam Sethi: 31:40

Yes. Uh, on the move, uh, Chris Bound, who was at Global is now head of studios at UK and Ireland at Spotify. Congratulations, Chris. He said, I'm super excited to tell you about my new role as Head of Studios, UK and Ireland. It'll be interesting. I'll see if we can get him on the show in a couple of weeks when he's got his feet under

James Cridland: 32:00

the table. Yes, that would be good if he's allowed to talk to us. Um, Jacob Kinsley is also, uh, starting work in a UK podcast company. This one is Amazon Music. He is a podcast. Partner specialist. Uh, he used to work for Acast and for Apple and is the first hiring for podcast partnerships at Amazon Music in the eu. Uh, also, Cameron Mole has joined Buzzsprout, our sponsor as VP of Design. So Buzzsprout will begin to look even more. Beautiful. Uh, he used to work at Metta and Pendo, whoever Pendo are, and Leo Laport is to retire, but don't worry, he's only retiring from radio. The tech guy radio show, which he's been doing for, um, well for quite some considerable time. Almost, um, 20 years. Uh, it's carried on over 160 radio stations in the us. And it'll end on December the 18th. They've got somebody else lined up for that show. It's changing its name and all of that. But, um, that's a good long run. So many Congratulations, Leah.

Sam Sethi: 32:59

Now if you wanna find more jobs, you can do on pod jobs@a.net. It's though, Uh, James, what can they do if they wanna stick a

James Cridland: 33:06

job up there? Yes, you can, and it's free as well. I just pop along to pod jobs.net. Uh, the only rules are it has to be a paid job because free jobs aren't jobs. Uh, events and awards, uh, coming up are very much looking forward to the Brisbane podcasters meetup. Which is tonight, November the 25th. Um, in Southbank, in Brisbane. I'll tell you exactly where it is. It's at the plow, which is, um, that old pub in the middle of all of that new stuff next to the beach. And, um, it starts at six in the evening. Uh, please do come along. There's also an ABC. Uh, event. It's not ABC event, it's a Hacks and hackers event, which is, um, at the abc. But anyway, that finishes at six 30 and those folk will also be coming. Uh, so that should be quite fun. Looking forward to a beer there. Um, and there's, uh, beer going on in, uh, Manchester as well. Listen to Sam.

Sam Sethi: 33:55

Yeah, there's a podcast, a meetup in person. It says in Manchester. So if you go to the, uh, again, to pod news event section, you'll be able to find the link to that as well. Yes.

James Cridland: 34:04

And some, uh, awards and things happening. The 27th annual we awards of course is, uh, happening. The final entry deadline is on December the 16th, 2022. Uh, if you want to be as, uh, if you want to win as many Webby awards as I do, then you are gonna have to have two of them because obviously I have two. Of them, not that I like to mention it. Uh, the Radio Academy has also released details of the 2023 Arias Awards. One of the things which is quite interesting is that they have specific judging pools for the BBC and, uh, uh, other judging pools for commercial radio. And they've now got a judging pool for indie podcasts. So what that basically means is if you're an indie podcaster, you have more chance of winning. Uh, which is quite interesting. So more details on that at, uh, pod news.net. And the Pod Fest Expo is the next big podcast event, which is in Tampa, in Florida, in the us, which is the same state as Buzzsprout comes from. Uh, that's on January the 26th. So if you fancy a trip to uh, Florida and you can afford the airfares, Goodness me, the airfares. Um, then, uh, you should, uh, go there. Uh, you'll find more, uh, events and stuff like that@pod.events, uh, which is the pod news, uh, events website. Guess who couldn't buy pod events.net me. Uh, so that's why it's there. Uh, so, uh, and it's also free for you to, uh, submit your own. What's happening for you this week, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 35:30

Well, as I said earlier, I'm gonna try and set up a Master don server, uh, for the project I'm working on. I, I dunno why. I just thought I'd try it and see what happens. Um, I'm playing with cross comment, uh, as part of the podcast index thing to see how that might work. Um, yeah, so we'll see how that goes. Um, and I'm also, yes, finally. Yes, it has been, uh, teased out for far too long. Uh, next week I will have the first episode of Sam Talks Technology. Nice. So, uh, on the 7th of December I will be doing that first

James Cridland: 36:03

show. So thank you for that and very good. Who's on that first show, Sam, are you, are you able to tell us? Yeah, yeah. Kevin

Sam Sethi: 36:08

Rook and uh, and a couple of other VCs who. Dealing with, uh, satoshi based startups, so smiles and stacking news and various others. So I'm just looking at why and how people are investing into value for value enabled platforms and where the micropayment system is going. So you might have a little bit of. All be

James Cridland: 36:31

in there as well. Well, very nice. Um, for me, I've been down in Sydney, as I mentioned earlier, so I went down to the Australian Podcast Awards, which was lovely, but very, very crowded. And, uh, I felt very uncomfortable what with all of this covid stuff going on. Uh, but still it was fun. And, uh, I ended up recording. Monday's pod news from the bar next to where the event was going on, which was where all of the people who just won awards were going for their celebratory bottle of champagne. And that was a lovely, positive place to be. So I very much enjoyed that. That was good fun. Um, And, uh, also saw a few other people while I was down in, uh, Sydney, uh, got back last night. Absolutely knackered, uh, as is always the case. Uh, but that's all good. And one of the other things that I've been working quite hard is just actually just making sure that I've, uh, uh, got rid of my masteron server because it's a nightmare to run. Uh, a hugely expensive, um, way over. Technology, uh, it's a complete waste of time, effort, and everything else. So I've switched over Tooma, uh, which is, uh, much more simple runs on far smaller boxes, uh, far more scalable. It's a very good thing. So I would highly recommend that. Um, but that's the other thing that I've been doing. Oh, master Don. So

Sam Sethi: 37:49

maybe I won't be starting a Master Don server then. Uh, maybe.

James Cridland: 37:53

I go for it. Go for it. And you will probably learn exactly the same. I mean, one of, one of the big things about, uh, so Macon sucks in all of the media that you are looking at in your feed, uh, copies it all onto its own hard drive, um, for reasons. Um, whereas, um, OMA. Doesn't do any of that. So your hard drive doesn't immediately fill up. Um, I ended up, you know, I mean, it was something like, you know, 25 gigs worth of data that was being stored on some Amazon S3 drive that I ended up having to spin up just because it's just a nightmare. Absolute nightmare. So Paroma is a good thing. I should have listened to John, John Chichi from, um, the podcast index.social, um, when he was telling me not to do a Master Don server. And I'm, uh, and I'm, uh, kicking myself that I didn't listen. But anyway, so that's what I've been doing, uh, today, so that's fun. Uh, and that's it for this week, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 38:50

Yes, it is. You can. Feedback using email@weeklypodnews.net, or send us a booster gram. If your podcast app doesn't support boosting, grab a new app from pod news.net/and new podcast apps.

James Cridland: 39:04

Our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Don't forget their Black Friday. Sales studio dragonfly.com. Our voiceover is Sheila D. She doesn't have a Black Friday sale on. And we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz. Podcast hosting made easy.

Sheila Dee: 39:18

Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter@podnews.net. Tell your friends and grow the show. Support us and support us. The POD News weekly review will return next week. Keep listening.