James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 21st of April 20, 23. I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News in Berlin.

Sam Sethi: 0:16

And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of Pot Fan, still stuck just outside of London.

James Cridland: 0:20

Never mind. In the chapters today, Spotify exclusives go away or do they? Rhodes launches seven new products at the NAB show. The Podcast Academy Award finally announced fake Joe Rogan near Zukerman a new proposal for across app comments and much, much more. Plus, And I'm Elisa Scherer from the Pew Research Center. And later, I'll talk about our new podcast research. they will. This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzz Sprout. Last week, mo than 4000 people started a podcast with Buzz about podcast hosting, made easy with powerful tools and remarkable customer support. Now you can turn your listeners into supporters with buzz subscriptions. You can try it on us if you like. We cleared up pod news dot net

Sam Sethi: 1:17

James, let's kick this off. Well, it's a little bit of a congratulations. First of all, after nearly four years about Sprouts Own podcast called Buzz Cast has reached their 100th episode. So a round of applause to all concerned.

James Cridland: 1:29

hirahara for them. Yes, that's a that's a splendid thing if you can hit 100 episodes. So many congratulations to Buzz cast.

Sam Sethi: 1:38

Now, James, you said you're in Berlin. What are you doing in Berlin?

James Cridland: 1:41

I am here for a conference that Spotify is running for the German language parts of the world. And yes, so looking forward to that as we record. That's going to be tomorrow. But because of the slight vagaries of recording the show, it will already have happened by the time this show goes out. So, yeah, so I can't tell you anything about it because I haven't been there yet.

Sam Sethi: 2:07

It's time travel. Go on, James. Do it now. Okay, well, let's cover off some of the other Spotify announcements that have happened. Gimlet First off, Spotify, stopping the platform exclusivity for some of its shows. Tell me more

James Cridland: 2:22

Yes. So this is this is a

Sam Sethi: 2:24

about.

James Cridland: 2:24

story in Semaphore, which, I mean, essentially it says that Spotify is stopping platform exclusivity for some of its game shows. It turns out that it's probably one of its gimlet shows, which is science versus I'm not sure that this is a major change, but we have seen Spotify removing exclusives from some shows in the past. And my kind of feeling around all of it is that Spotify is now less about exclusives and more about ad sales and reaching as many people as they possibly can. And that appears to be happening in this case. But I mean, they say that Gimlet staff have been told that Spotify will allow some more of the company's shows on other audio platforms as well. So perhaps that's good news for fans of open podcasting.

Sam Sethi: 3:16

Spotify acquired Gimlet for $230 million back in 2019, and it had high hopes that exclusive access to podcasts like Raphael would bring new subscribers to the streaming service. Do you think Gimlet has been a successful acquisition? James

James Cridland: 3:30

Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, certainly has they've you know, there's a great amount of knowledge in the Gimlet organisation, but also there's a great amount of fantastic content that has come out of that. So, you know, I know that things have changed and that certainly reply all, which was the big show four or five years ago, has of course I think it's temporarily stopped production, so they say. But you know, that's obviously gone away. But there's been plenty of other very successful shows from Gimlet, and I think that that's been a good a good thing for them.

Sam Sethi: 4:06

Jake Warren, frien of the show from iMessage Herge, tweeted out, Sadly, the Gimlet Magic has gone and the party is well and truly over. So I don't think everyone thinks it's good news.

James Cridland: 4:17

Yeah, Well, you know, you can you can certainly see if you're a fan of, you know as I was the reply all show and then all of a sudden that rather imploded. You can certainly see that that's you know not a not a great thing but um yeah you know that that's change unfortunately. And that's what happens in terms of change.

Sam Sethi: 4:36

Moving on then. The ringer. this is another acquisition, I assume, James, that Spotify bought and it was generally held that the shows were exclusive to the platform. It's not quite true. Now, James. It seems that more of the Ringer shows are now becoming non-exclusive as well.

James Cridland: 4:53

Well, there's only been one. So the ringer is really interesting because apparently Bill Simmons basically told Daniel EK, Don't make any of my shows exclusives because we need the ad revenue. And if you make them exclusives, then we won't get the ad revenue anymore. And so the ringer shows are all apparently non-exclusive. Apart from one of them, the ringer may show we're very keen to point out to me that they are exclusive on Spotify. The show was once produced on Spotify Greenroom. There are a few shows which you can find on Apple Podcasts, but you know, not for some time. That show is now being made using Twitter spaces. So it goes to say, You know what? What's going on there? But I think, you know, apart from that pretty well, every ring a show is available to anyone on whatever platform that they want to end up using.

Sam Sethi: 5:48

Okay, let's move on then a little bit more Spotify news starting from June. The first chart Apple will no longer provide, confirm plays and episode consumption data from Apple Podcasts. Are they closing the wall again around charitable?

James Cridland: 6:03

No, I don't think they are. I think actually, weirdly, this is Apple's wall. There's never been a method of programmatically getting podcast consumption data to other services. So things like, you know, how how far did people get through this particular show and you know, and all, all that kind of stuff that you can see in Apple Podcasts connect, But you can't export that information in a programmatic way without you yourself logging into Apple Podcasts. And I think that's essentially what charitable is stopping doing. Charitable, I think was running a scraper which you typed in your Apple podcast username and password and then, you know, chart Apple will go in and grab that information. And they finally said, you know what, when we're not going to be doing this anymore. And so starting on June the first, stopping doing all of that weird scraping that they were doing, I mean, you'll still be able to get downloads from Apple Podcasts and from other platforms as well. Just as you can on any podcast host or any podcast analytics service. But this particular thing is, I think, probably a sensible move by charitable to stop scraping the information from Apple Podcasts.

Sam Sethi: 7:15

MM

James Cridland: 7:15

Connect.

Sam Sethi: 7:16

Now Spotify falls at the first hurdle.

James Cridland: 7:18

Hey,

Sam Sethi: 7:19

hey, get out of there early.

James Cridland: 7:21

yeah.

Sam Sethi: 7:21

Spotify has announced its closing hurdle, a popular music guessing game purchased last year for an undisclosed amount, on its website it said thanks for playing hurdle but unfortunate we have to say goodbye. A pop up message reads on the Hurdle website from May. The fifth hurdle will no longer be available. Why have they closed it? James I mean, it seems like word was such a big success for New York Times. Was Hurdle just a failure that

James Cridland: 7:46

Well, I mean, some of the stories that I've read suggest that hurdle wasn't a particularly big thing. I mean, I think it was a big thing in the community that I follow. And certainly watching, you know, the good the good folk from radio have been playing this game every day. It's a bit like the intro, I suppose. But from that point of view, you know, yeah, that was fun. I mean, it was a bit strange because it can't be that complicated to run Hurdle, which is just a music discovery tool. And surely that's what Spotify is all about. It's about music discovery tools. So I don't really understand why they've closed it. But clearly, you know, Spotify closing a bunch of things at the moment, and that's one of the things that Spotify has ended up closing. So our IP hurdle, I never played you once, but I'm sure you are very good.

Sam Sethi: 8:41

there you go. Now, this is an interesting one. Spotify strikes a creative video deal with Jelly Smacker. Do you know who Jelly smackers James

James Cridland: 8:50

I don't know who Jerry Mac is. You've had a bit more of a look into this, haven't you?

Sam Sethi: 8:55

Yeah. So Spotify is building out its catalog of videos by repackaging existing content from top creators into video podcasts. So Jelly Smack is the company behind Mr. Beast and Bailey salary with the second one? I don't really know, but Mr.

James Cridland: 9:11

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 9:11

Beast is massive.

James Cridland: 9:12

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 9:13

Why are they doing this? Are they trying to compete with YouTube?

James Cridland: 9:17

Well, it looks as if they are producing stuff which is edited footage from the long form content which already exists on YouTube and basically using that in other formats on Spotify as platform. So it does look as if Spotify is getting a little bit more into video, which is, you know, always interesting to end up saying they've made some video podcast deals in the past and perhaps this is just a nice way of getting some bigger names in without those names actually having to do an awful lot.

Sam Sethi: 9:48

Hmm. It seems an odd thing to do, but anyway, I'm sure it will progress.

James Cridland: 9:52

Hmm.

Sam Sethi: 9:53

Talking of more video, video podcasts are coming to APM financially inclined starting on Thursday. It'll break down money lessons for a teen and a young adult audience. The episodes will be available on both YouTube and in an audio form via RSS. Here's Apmc James.

James Cridland: 10:12

So APM is American Public Media, which comes out of Minnesota out of Saint Paul. And this new show that they have is with a, you know, a YouTube influence type person who I think is pronounced Jane Lee Aspinall. And it's very much a young person's podcast all about keeping money simple. That's the basic plan there. And so what they're doing is they're producing that as a video podcast onto YouTube and then you'll also be able to listen to the audio only on RSS because apparently, you know, podcasts can't be video at all. I'm not quite sure why they've got this idea from because they surely should be producing at least a video feed or even better, an alternate enclosure so that those podcast apps which are capable of it can actually show the video version. But maybe there's a good reason why they're not doing that quite yet.

Sam Sethi: 11:17

To be fair, I mean, look, the alternative enclosure is the right way for the open community to go, and apps need to enable that.

James Cridland: 11:26

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 11:26

I know pod verse does already. I am not sure Fountain. I know pop bands already does, but it's not released and I'm not sure I'm curious. COSTA But again,

James Cridland: 11:37

Hmm.

Sam Sethi: 11:38

as I as a community of apps, we need to support the enclosure time to give the hosts the reason to support an embed using the enclosure tech.

James Cridland: 11:47

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 11:47

I think if we don't, we will see control to Apple, Spotify and YouTube very quickly. That's my worry.

James Cridland: 11:53

Yeah. I think certainly ceding control to Spotify and YouTube. I think Apple, you know, they don't support the alternative closure tag. Perhaps they will in the future, but they, of course support video podcasts and they have done ever since. Video podcasts were a new and exciting thing. But certainly, you know, Spotify has this weird proprietary thing that you have to have with Spotify. YouTube, of course, isn't podcasting at all, really. And I think you're absolutely right. You know, if we're not careful, we will cede control over the the video portion to both Spotify and to YouTube. And perhaps that needs to be a little bit more open as well.

Sam Sethi: 12:33

Now, Cory Doctorow, he's an author and activist. If you haven't heard of him, he's a very smart guy, has criticized

James Cridland: 12:40

Hmm.

Sam Sethi: 12:40

Spotify, the BBC as well, and Apple for operating walled gardens instead of an open podcasting platform, which we've been shouting about for ages.

James Cridland: 12:48

Yes,

Sam Sethi: 12:50

Yeah,

James Cridland: 12:50

he was so talking on a podcast called the Changelog and he was criticizing the BBC, but I don't really follow the criticism of the BBC. I mean, I'm all for criticism of the BBC. I'll I'll jump in. You know, hope me back, but I'm not necessarily sure that I understood his criticism, which was basically that BBC sounds, which is the BBC's music podcasts and radio app, is there to stop people from skipping through the ads. I mean, he's a bright chap, he's Curry, he's worked for the BBC in the past, so he surely understands that the main point of the BBC Sounds app is for the UK audience, which doesn't carry any ads at all. And secondly, actually you can skip the podcast that's quite happily within BBC sounds. I don't really understand what he's talking about there, but I think he's got a good point in terms of the Apple thing. He calls Apple's premium subscription service, quote, a deliberate piece of engineering. This allows Apple to use up the relationship between audiences and podcasters. And I think he's got a point there in terms of if you're using Patreon or if you're using by mere coffee dot com or any of these services, then you can go and grab the details of your supporters and you can email them and you could do all kinds of other things with them. Whereas with Apple, it's actually quite difficult to even work out how many people you have who are paying for your individual, you know, ad free show

Sam Sethi: 14:27

yeah. I mean, I've long called Apple podcast the 87 of podcasting, and it still remains so today. Now moving on. Well, even there.

James Cridland: 14:37

now, now,

Sam Sethi: 14:38

Oh, I would say though, at your conference was Spotify yesterday, tomorrow, your time travel. You certainly got

James Cridland: 14:45

yes.

Sam Sethi: 14:45

some questions to ask him. Anyway, so we'll

James Cridland: 14:48

Yes. Well, certainly some questions

Sam Sethi: 14:50

talk

James Cridland: 14:50

to ask. I mean, the weird thing

Sam Sethi: 14:51

about

James Cridland: 14:52

is that Spotify wants to interview me. So there's

Sam Sethi: 14:56

that,

James Cridland: 14:57

you have a panel who is head of international talk shows. So basically very,

Sam Sethi: 15:03

but

James Cridland: 15:03

ve important at Spotify. But

Sam Sethi: 15:06

I

James Cridland: 15:07

he's going to be interviewing me.

Sam Sethi: 15:08

will.

James Cridland: 15:08

Um, yeah. So that'll be I mean, that's lovely. Um, but also very, um, yes, very sort of weird and humbling. So that should be fun looking forward to that and also looking forward to interviewing for the podcast Business Journal. Nina Harvey, who looks after much of Spotify audio advertising within Europe, and she'll be talking to me about how much Spotify have been investing into the podcast space in Europe. So quite interesting to find out more information about that so you can spot that in the podcast Business Journal. You won't find that online, not quite yet, but you will find it if you go and subscribe at podcast business Journal dot com.

Sam Sethi: 15:57

Now, James, you've just flown in from the NAB show. What's the NAB show?

James Cridland: 16:02

I have, yes. Can you, can you tell that I sound as if I've not necessarily had enough sleep and the NAB show is. Oh that's an interesting question. I believe it's the National Association of Broadcasters and it was their 100th show just gone at Las Vegas. Lots and lots of people were there and lots of podcast companies were there, which was nice. Blueberry was there. Todd Cochrane was looking almost as tired as I am.

Elisa Shearer: 16:27

Don't leave me, Todd Cochran.

James Cridland: 16:29

Also pod bean were they're giving away some very fancy backpacks. I noticed I did kind of hung around for a little bit, but then I got slightly embarrassed. LIPSON We're in a different place, and Riverside was there and they had their own barista, so if you found them, then you were doing very well. But yeah, it was really good. It's a massive, massive, great big show. I forget the numbers that they said were there, Yeah. So I was there interviewing Valerie Geller, who is a radio and podcast consultant, and she ended up being, you know, a really, really interesting, you know, really interesting interview. So that was good. There was a bunch of other stuff there as well. I should tell you that the attendance was 65,013. The total amount of people who were there, 65,030. And I can tell you also that I was three of those because I appeared in that database three times. But yes, but, you know, massive, great big thing, 17,000 international attendees, of which I was clearly one of them, 1200 exhibiting companies. It's a big, big, big thing. So, yeah, it was a good it was a good couple of days, although, you know, tiring and I was only there for 36 hours, frankly, 35 hours probably too much for for Vegas. But there were an awful lot of other speakers there as well. There were people talking about the future of TV and they're doing work on transitioning to a new version of the ATSIC platform that they use in the United States. There's lots of Twittering about I am in cars and competition for the dashboard and all of that and the NAB are even concerned about artificial intelligence will probably come back to artificial intelligence in just a little bit. So lots of, you know, interesting stuff going on at the, at the NAB

Sam Sethi: 18:37

So Google his wife. What did she say about the future of podcasting then?

James Cridland: 18:41

not year again as

Sam Sethi: 18:41

Oh,

James Cridland: 18:42

well.

Sam Sethi: 18:42

okay.

James Cridland: 18:44

There are lots of galahs. Yeah, she was, she was good. She was she was on form. She has written a very good book which is called Beyond Powerful Radio. And you can find beyond powerful podcasting dot com is I believe a website address as well. And Valerie has worked with lots of people very, very closely for a number of years. I mean, you know, some of the things that she talks about making sure that you use your language correctly and making sure that you write for the ear rather than writing for the eye, which is an important thing if you're a print journalist getting into podcasting and also making sure that you're using the word you a lot. So it's no good saying, you know, it's no good saying, you know, I feel this and I feel that it's much better for a podcast to turn around and say, How do you feel about this? You know, what do you think? And this is, of course, where cross out comments and all that kind of stuff should come in really, really handy. But no, she's a class act. So it was it was it was a good thing to interview her after so many years.

Sam Sethi: 19:51

Yeah. Now, CEO Curtis Liggett, who's the president of the National Association of Broadcaster, called the NAB, as he said. And this fierce competition for the dashboard is quite entertaining for us. This podcast is because if General Motors does remove CarPlay and Android, which they're suggesting, I wonder what they'll put in its place to allow podcasters to be able to play podcasts on their cars.

James Cridland: 20:13

Yes. I mean, I think that's a bit of a mistake from General Motors, it has to be said. But there again, it hasn't done Tesla any harm getting not having CarPlay or indeed Android Auto in their cars. But yeah, you know, I, I mean it's a different world in America. I think that's the main thing. It's different in terms of radio consumption where over 50% of radio consumption is in the car, it's only about 20 or 20% or so in the rest of the world. So radio and the car are very much you know, intertwined. And I think that's what's worrying the broadcasters in the US is that quite a lot of vehicle manufacturers now are talking about taking aim out of the car entirely for they claim technical reasons. But you could also see that perhaps AM radio in the United States isn't what it once was. And clearly this is going to, you know, move this conversation on a little bit further. But yeah, so I think, you know, the only is having a little bit of a of a of an existential crisis at the moment around seeing the number one place where you listen to the to the radio. If you're in the US kind of turning its back on it.

Sam Sethi: 21:37

Now, we talked about artificial intelligence. I mean, again, a case like that said, there is potential danger is of artificial intelligence. Also, somebody called Duncan Crabtree, the national executive director of Performers and Broadcasters Union in Ireland, said AI voice cloning for podcasts is a concern. So on that you had a story, James, about a company called M Co, a radio automation company that has launched two new AI powered services, eight track, which automates a radio announcer and ENCODE again getting people come up with a better name. It makes radio ads automatically. I mean, we talked about the company last week as well.

James Cridland: 22:21

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 22:21

So look, D Duncan Crabtree and Gutzler get half a point is a concern for the radio and podcasting world.

James Cridland: 22:28

yeah. I mean I think I in certain cases is a bit of a concern. And so Duncan Crabtree, Ireland is his full name actually and and the union

Sam Sethi: 22:38

So he's

James Cridland: 22:38

so

Sam Sethi: 22:39

not from

James Cridland: 22:39

he's not

Sam Sethi: 22:39

Ireland,

James Cridland: 22:39

from Ireland. I know it's a weird name

Sam Sethi: 22:41

right?

James Cridland: 22:41

isn't it. Duncan Crabtree, Ireland. But the union is SAG-AFTRA,

Sam Sethi: 22:44

Wasn't sure.

James Cridland: 22:44

Which is the union which looks after performers and broadcasters and I can well see his point in that actually, you know, and we've already heard stories about radio presenters whose voices have been cloned by, you know, the company that they're doing shows for. And then they can get those radio presenters to say all kinds of things because they've got a clone of their voice. So I can I can well see that. I think he's absolutely right that that, you know, the union gets involved in that sort of thing to look after their their members. So I think that that makes makes you know, a bunch of sense in terms of the new stuff that's coming out of Inco. I mean, basically, as soon as you put artificial intelligence on anything, then you get acres of press coverage. And that's exactly what Echo has been doing. Their radio automation company much like R.C.S. Or similar companies who basically you know produce all of these services that play the songs and play the adverts and everything else. And air track is basically a way that you can have a radio personality on your on your station when there's nobody there to talk about the music that you play or to give travel news or weather information or all that kind of stuff with an air voice. So again, you can see why performers unions may not be over the over the moon at that. And I think making radio ads automatically. Yes, we played a little clip from a radio ad that another service ad forces had built us last week. So much interest in that, because actually one of the things that stops people from advertising on the radio and stops people from advertising in podcasts is, oh, I don't know how to make an ad and I don't know who to who to go and voice it and everything else. If you can get rid of that entire hurdle, then that makes life really, really easy. So you've got all of that stuff. And then of course, you've got Joe Rogan that has realised that there are other people now who have released some more air generated stuff with him. And I mean, it's very obvious when you have a look at what they've what the people have been doing. You know, they say this is air. This is not the real Joe Rogan everywhere. You would be under no illusion that it wasn't the real Joe Rogan, but Joe Rogan still a little bit a little bit, you know, unhappy in terms of what that might end up, you know, meaning for him in the future as well.

Sam Sethi: 25:24

Yeah. I mean, it was a conversation between Joe Rogan and Sam Altman, the CEO of Open. I only, as you said, with a load of disclaimers. And the ideas and opinions expressed in this podcast are not reflective of their actual thoughts. But this is about as bad as as I think you said it last week, This it's about as bad as I get and will only get better. And so each iteration

James Cridland: 25:44

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 25:45

of the Joe Rogan A.I. voice will get closer and closer to the real Joe Rogan. Till I guess there's the Turing Test. Can you tell the difference between Joe Rogan and a Joe Rogan?

James Cridland: 25:57

yeah, yeah. No. And you know, some of the voices, some of the voice claims I've heard have been really good. I mean, really, really good. So and in fact, I did hear a conversation at Radio Days, not this year, but last year from somebody, a very well-respected person within the radio industry. And he was saying that he heard he was talking to someone. And I think it was the estate of Alan Freeman who was, I guess, the closest that the UK has ever had to Casey Kasem. You know, the big the big voiced deejay who does all of the countdowns and everything else. And they were talking about cloning his voice and basically looking after what he would have done if he was still alive today, doing doing shows. So, you know, I mean, the whole thing is it's it's all a bit weird, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 26:53

Yeah. Well, Bruce Willis has already sold the voice IP rights to his voice for various other films that he may not act him, but his voice will

James Cridland: 27:03

Mm

Sam Sethi: 27:03

be used. And I know that several voices have been used in other films in comebacks, like Carrie Fisher's voice was used in the Star Wars film in that same way.

James Cridland: 27:11

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 27:12

I wonder, I guess the only people who are going to make money out of this again will be lawyers who will have voice IP, copyright protection that they will be looking for.

James Cridland: 27:19

Yes, I guess so. I guess so. I mean yeah, it's, it's going to be really interesting to watch what happens there and you know, I think, you know, in terms of who owns the copyright in your voice, well that's very similar to who owns the copyright in your likeness, in your photograph. And there are already some quite established rules around that. So Yeah, but yeah, it's, it's, it's a very different world really. Is.

Sam Sethi: 27:45

So the European Parliament is developing stricter regulations around A.I., including requiring chat bot developers to disclose when they use copyrighted content. So it is happening

James Cridland: 27:56

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 27:57

slowly.

James Cridland: 27:57

And I think that that is sensible. I have noticed a big uptake in the amount of, of articles which are being written on Medium which of course pays you a certain amount of money depending on how many people read your articles. And I've seen a significant uptick of really boring podcast advice, and I'm there reading them, going this podcast. This podcast advice is done with no flair, with no interest, with no excitement. I suspect that they are all I written. Um, and it is getting very hard for me to know which is I and which is real in terms of some of these articles to the point where I'm thinking that actually probably get rid of Medium because it looks as if it's just being spammed by the lots of people who are just making as many articles as they possibly can using um, chat GPT or similar. Um, you know, I model such as

Sam Sethi: 29:00

Hmm.

James Cridland: 29:00

that.

Sam Sethi: 29:00

Now let's travel back to the NAB and very quickly

James Cridland: 29:03

Oh, let's

Sam Sethi: 29:04

and get off the air. Helter Skelter Now road announced seven new products at the NAB show. What were they, James? Not all of them, but the main

James Cridland: 29:13

yes,

Sam Sethi: 29:13

ones. I mean, just stick to the knitting. Get the remaining

James Cridland: 29:16

yes.

Sam Sethi: 29:16

ones now

James Cridland: 29:16

Well it was seven products and updates. Um, and so they didn't announce seven products, but they did announce seven products and updates. But the big products that they announced was the Road two duo, which is basically like the road Caster Pro, but it's got less faders on it, it's got less inputs on it. It's a shrunk down version and that will work absolutely fine if you if it's just you and a mate in your house, it's got to make inputs. It's absolutely fine. So the road caster duo looks very smart and very neat. There's the pod mike USB, which is for the first time they've put they've put a USB connection into that microphone. It's an excellent mic as well. And so that's a very smart thing. And then there's this new thing that they have launched, which is pretty well an industry. First, it's a thing which has got an excellent audio interface in it as well as a video capture card in one. It's called the Streamer X, It's part of the road X list of, you know, stuff for streamers. I'm they're looking at it and thinking that's a really good box for someone who is, you know, on open fire on Onlyfans or something like that. It's a really good box for that. Or if of course, if you're streaming a, you know, a game or whatever. But you know, particularly for Onlyfans, it's

Sam Sethi: 30:54

you

James Cridland: 30:54

going

Sam Sethi: 30:54

go.

James Cridland: 30:54

to be a great little box. So I all power to road for working out a new market, I think. But yeah, really, really impressive. There was a real buzz they were advertising it on the be an h stand um which, which of course is one of the is it that they and h that large American company that sells, um, that sells audio equipment, I want to call it an H and I really hope it's, it. Yes it is. It is be an H because I'm they're going Benson and Hedges that was B and H

Sam Sethi: 31:31

Yes,

James Cridland: 31:31

as well.

Sam Sethi: 31:32

It was.

James Cridland: 31:32

It's not, it's not. Yeah. Um English cigarette

Sam Sethi: 31:36

But the Marlboro

James Cridland: 31:36

brands

Sam Sethi: 31:37

Man,

James Cridland: 31:37

that

Sam Sethi: 31:37

they

James Cridland: 31:37

ladies and

Sam Sethi: 31:37

got.

James Cridland: 31:37

gentlemen. Yes. Yes. Um, so yeah, so you know, it was really exciting. I was trying to get a photograph of the new toys and everything else, and I basically just had to take a picture over somebody's shoulder as they were doing a video interview because it was a video interview followed by a video interview, followed by a video interview. And I just got bored. So I thought, I'm just going to take take some pictures and then then leave. But, um, yeah, very, very impressive. So they've done a really good, really good job there.

Sam Sethi: 32:10

So I've got the road cast approach to here with me. And I'm looking

James Cridland: 32:13

Mm.

Sam Sethi: 32:13

at the picture that you took of the duo. I think that's a perfect home podcasting unit. I really do. I like the the set up you don't need. I've got six channels with virtual channels. And it's such an overly engineered, complex box compared to the simpler

James Cridland: 32:30

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 32:30

DIY, which I think would be perfect. Why, though, would they not put the video card into the joint? Just made it as well as one unit.

James Cridland: 32:38

Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe they are focusing

Sam Sethi: 32:40

Yeah.

James Cridland: 32:41

on the road caster being an audio device and this new streamer X device is being, you know, it's, it's a new product by itself. So maybe they're actually having

Sam Sethi: 32:53

So

James Cridland: 32:54

a look at that's the one thing I would also mention about the streamer X is that it has software in it which also your your road your road caster will also have which will automatically connect to roads, wireless microphones as well. So you can you can wear those clip on microphones and, you know, and it will interface with those as well. So it really is the perfect tool for somebody who is at home maybe doing training. Um, you know, or maybe doing, you know, something else.

Sam Sethi: 33:30

Well, I think I'll try it if they do the upload of the.

James Cridland: 33:34

Yeah. Try on your own, your own defence, uh, channel.

Sam Sethi: 33:37

Well yeah. Yeah. But you can't be the only subscriber James. That's what's sad about it. You

James Cridland: 33:45

Uh,

Sam Sethi: 33:47

know what I was going to say was before you

James Cridland: 33:49

yes.

Sam Sethi: 33:49

put me off my lunch was I could actually put I want to go to Mike and if they do the software update because it's not available right now, I checked out last

James Cridland: 33:58

Hmm.

Sam Sethi: 33:58

night on

James Cridland: 33:59

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 33:59

my road but road cast a pro to then I could try next week and see what the difference is because at the moment I'm using, you know, a next level. Mike and it would be interesting to see what the difference would be between the two

James Cridland: 34:11

Yeah. And I believe I would not expect necessarily that software updates in the next

Sam Sethi: 34:17

of.

James Cridland: 34:17

week. I think it's going to be a few months from here.

Sam Sethi: 34:20

Oh, okay.

James Cridland: 34:21

But

Sam Sethi: 34:21

All

James Cridland: 34:21

I think

Sam Sethi: 34:22

right.

James Cridland: 34:22

you know that,

Sam Sethi: 34:22

So

James Cridland: 34:23

that you know, it was a it was a very clever move of them to, you know, announce everything all at the NAB show. And actually what was particularly good is I got to meet Nick from Rhodes PR Department. Um, he,

Sam Sethi: 34:37

hello.

James Cridland: 34:38

he lives in Sydney, I live in Brisbane. So it was very good to, um, yeah, to actually be able to say hello and to, and to, to have a chat with him.

Sam Sethi: 34:48

So when are we announcing the official the, you know, sponsorship? Come

James Cridland: 34:52

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 34:52

on.

James Cridland: 34:52

I don't think that's going to happen.

Sam Sethi: 34:54

Okay.

James Cridland: 34:54

I don't

Sam Sethi: 34:54

All right.

James Cridland: 34:54

think that's going to happen.

Sam Sethi: 34:56

Well, if you want to see more, Elsie Escobar, a friend of the show also is covering her initial thoughts on it on she podcast Episode 397, if you want to check that out.

James Cridland: 35:07

Excellent.

Sam Sethi: 35:07

They also announced, James, something called Road Unify. It's in a public beta. Unify is right totally free virtual mixing and streaming software. So if you haven't got a road cast, a pro too, or a duo, you can do it in software. The beta introduced the ability to assign voice effects such as reverb, echo and pitch mixer actions such as sensor buttons and back channel fade out to your microphones. So yeah, it's free to download. You can get it today and it's available in beta.

James Cridland: 35:39

Yeah, it's a smart thing and I think this is the one of the trends happening in the podcast technology space is that actually you're seeing hardware companies become software companies, Software companies become hardware companies, and there's that sort of mix in between. Now. Um, so certainly seeing for example, sure, um, having very nice software for their microphones so that you can configure them and everything else. Um, you know, I think that there's going to be a bunch of that going on and I think, you know, very, very interesting seeing that trend continuing.

Sam Sethi: 36:12

Yes. Now, James, quick question. Where do you get your news from

James Cridland: 36:16

Where do I get

Sam Sethi: 36:17

when

James Cridland: 36:17

my news

Sam Sethi: 36:17

you get

James Cridland: 36:18

from? It's it's mostly from two places. It's from the ABC in Australia, uh, and from The Guardian, which I think probably lays me out as being a, as being a leftie tofu eating whoa, karate. Um, but yes, that's basically where I get my news from. Where'd you get yours from?

Sam Sethi: 36:36

well? I don't watch much television anymore and I actually now get it mainly from podcasts. I get it from the rest is politics and the news agent occasionally skim TV news and then I go to websites like News Now or take me to get my summary news. So that's where I get mine. You get yours elsewhere. But the Pew Research Center has released a study examining podcasts as a source of news and information. The study suggests that two thirds of all podcast listeners have heard news discussed on the podcasts they listen to, and almost all of them expect the news to be accurate. However, few directly listen to podcasts from news organizations themselves, like the BBC. I suppose now

James Cridland: 37:19

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 37:19

you had a chance to talk to the person behind that research. What what was the scoop

James Cridland: 37:24

Yes, I did. I talked to

Sam Sethi: 37:26

one

James Cridland: 37:26

one of the senior researchers at the Pew Research Center who put this together. She's called Elisa Scherer, and I asked her what they found out. But I also started by just asking who the Pew Research Center was. the Pew Research Center is a nonprofit research center that studies American views and opinions about our changing world. We're a nonprofit, nonpartisan, non advocacy, and we're based in Washington, D.C., in the United States. So you have recently released podcasts as a source of news and information, which is a bunch of information, not just about news podcasts, but about podcasts in general, as well as news. Yes. What were the main things that you that you found in that research? Yeah, we undertook this study because we know that there's a lot of great industry data about podcasts out there. We've been tracking some of that industry data through our see it in the News media report. That's something that we released every couple of years. With this project, we really wanted to go into how Americans actually use podcasts and their experiences there. So not just the kind of underlying audience data, but Americans opinions about the podcasts they're going to. We found that podcasts are a big part of a lot of people's information diets. In the U.S. 49% of our respondents said that they had listened to a podcast in the last year, and actually 20% of U.S. adults said that they have listened to a podcast at least a few times a week or more. So that's particularly high and quite a lot of news in podcasts, but not necessarily news podcasts, I guess. Yeah, that's exactly right. Two thirds of podcast listeners. So we took those 49% of Americans and asked them sort of follow up questions about their podcast listening. Two thirds of those folks said that they hear about the news in some way on the podcast that they listen to, that we let them define that for themselves. We don't give them a hard definition. But we asked specifically then about, Well, are the podcasts you listening to? Are any of them connected directly to a news organization and just 20% of listeners said that. Yes. One of the podcasts I listen to is connected to a news organization. So there's a lot of news gathering that people are getting in a fragmented information environment that might not necessarily be coming directly from news outlets. Yeah, might not be coming from news outlets, I guess. Might not be coming from from journalists either. I suppose is is there anything there in terms of in terms of the trust of the stuff that they hear? Or is that a bit a bit far away from the the research that you were doing? I can't connect the the source of the news that they're getting to the trust. But one of the notable findings from the report is that 87% of listeners, which is very high when you're talking about trusted information in the states, 87% of podcast listeners said that they largely trust and expect to be accurate the news and information that they hear on podcasts. Yeah, and it's certainly something that we see in other research that podcasts are very trustworthy and all of that. You also ask what people are listening to podcasts for as well. This is one of my favorite questions. Yeah, there's a variety of reasons that Americans are turning to podcasts. Entertainment was the top one. 60% of listeners said that was a major reason, but also learning 55% that said that was a major reason. And this is my favorite response, just to have something to listen to while doing something else. That was the third highest major reason that people listed for listening to podcasts. Yeah, it's there's a radio station here in Australia which talks about music for your ears when your eyes are busy. And I think this is just a wonderful it's a wonderful phrase. You you've the research that you did talked about the change of lifestyle and what people have been doing since listening to a podcast. It appears that we can, as podcasters, can can also people's lives in many different ways. Yeah, one of the most common things that listeners said they did after listening to a podcast was just consuming some kind of media, like watching a movie or reading a book or listening to music. One interesting response that we had from that set of responses was 36% of podcast listeners said they made or tried a lifestyle change. Again, they could define that however they want. We gave some examples like trying out a workout or a new diet or journaling, but that's about a third of podcast. Listeners said that something that they would qualify as a lifestyle change is something that they did in response to a podcast. They listened to. Yeah. And is that is that advertising focused or is that just, you know, people talking about stuff that they found interesting? I'm wondering whether it's an advertising thing or not. It could be either we let people kind of think about that for themselves in the same way, especially in thinking about surveys and recall. You may not necessarily remember whether you heard on an ad or you heard it because of the host. We're talking about it, especially since most read ads a lot of the time. Another finding from that battery, though, is that 28% of listeners said they had actually bought something either promoted or talked about on a podcast. So again, we didn't kind of tease out that figuring out if it was actively promoted. But 28% of listeners said that they bought something because it was promoted or talked about on a podcast. Now, I suppose one of the things that that as foreigners know about the US is that it's a divided place. You'r either you're either red or you're blue. I'm wondering whether you did any research there in terms of what Republicans, how Republicans viewed the podcasts that they listened to versus Democrats. Was there any any difference there in terms of that? Yeah, One of the interesting a high level findings from the report are that Republicans and Democrats, while, as you said, have occasion and other areas of the media, have very different media diets and opinions actually turn to podcasts at about the same rate and hear news on the podcasts they listen to at about the same rate. So no huge differences there. About half of each party roughly are turning. Have a listen to a podcast. In the past 12 months. Once there, they do tend to have some different experiences. Republicans seem to are more likely to see the podcasts that they listen to as a source of unique news. So Republicans are more likely to say that they've heard news on a podcast extremely or fairly often that they wouldn't have heard elsewhere for example, Republicans are about twice as likely as Democratic podcast listeners to say that Republicans are also a lot more likely to say that they trust the news they get from podcasts more than the news they get from other sources. That's specifically and might speak more to Republicans in the States, their views of media sources in general, especially since that question asked about the media in general, and because trust in general. And we just asked, Do you think that this information is accurate? There isn't a big party difference, but Republicans podcast listeners seem to kind of see this news that they're getting as something that they can trust more than the news they're getting elsewhere, and it's something that they might not hear elsewhere. Yeah, Yeah. And that's that is really interesting. And yeah, and obviously there's the whole different media landscape anyway from, you know, from both sides as well. We've also on this very podcast, we've been talking about kids and kids consumption of podcasting. I know that you didn't look specifically into the into kids, but certainly looking into age groups. Did you find any differences in terms of the amount of podcast listening that's happening in different age groups in the US? Sure. So we we survey all adults over 18, which definitely isn't kids anymore, depending on your definition, but does include some Gen Z. You know, they're getting up there younger adults, like in a lot of digital media consumption that we study, younger adults are a lot more likely to be listening to podcasts. The rates are really high when you get to the youngest age group, two thirds of adults ages 18 to 29 say that they listen to a podcast in the past year versus when you get 65 plus it's just 28% younger adults tend to listen more frequently. Interestingly, they're not. Once you get a look at the listeners of podcasts, younger adults are more likely to hear news on the podcast. They're listening to than older adults. That may be because when we look at listeners, the older listeners are actually doing it for different reasons. So younger podcast listeners are turning, they're for entertainment, they're turning, they're for diversion, but having something to listen to while you're doing something else. Whereas the most common response among the older listeners that we surveyed was learning. That's why they're turning to the podcasts they're listening to. So there's not only difference in frequency, but once you get once you get to the podcast, the different age groups are turning out for different reasons. Yeah, so there's different needs as well, which is fascinating. And I think some of the more international research that we've been covering recently again shows that different countries have that have that as well, which is which is an interesting site. Was there anything that that particularly surprised you about the data that you found Surprised me. Great question. We asked about 12 different topics. When it comes to podcasting, and I was surprised at how honestly evenly spread out the consumption of those topics were. Obviously, there are some that rise to the top and some that rise to the bottom, but I think nine of them are all above 30%. None reach over half of listeners saying they're regularly turning to it. Nothing is really dominating the podcasting space in this questionnaire, which I think speaks to how kind of diverse and maybe even fragmented the media sector is. And I guess I wouldn't be doing my job properly if I didn't ask how you worked out all of this information. There are obviously lots of different ways of doing studies and surveys online and and on telephones and everything else. How how many people had you had you talk to and how did you actually get in touch with them? Sure. That's a great question. And I love answering this question. The Pew Research Center, we have an A, what's called the American Trends Panel, which is a probability, which means randomly selected. Everyone in the United States has an equal chance of being randomly selected. Survey Panel. This survey surveyed about 5000 respondents, which equates to between two and 3000 podcast listeners. And we try to send people short surveys that they feel comfortable answering. And we do that once or twice a month. Cool. And where can people see this research in full if they want to? Yeah, people can find this research. And a lot of the research that we've been doing on podcasts and audio media and other kinds of media at Pew Research, dot org p W and this. I also want to mention that this is the first report in a series of publications that will be focusing on a broad study of podcasts that we're doing throughout the year. Oh, interesting. What other things are coming up? Are you, are you? I can't be too specific, but we have heard we have a more data sciencey component and a few follow up studies based on this research. Yeah, really interesting. Thank you so much for your for your time. I really appreciate. It. Yeah. Thank you, James. Appreciate it.

Sam Sethi: 48:26

There you go. Elisa Scherer No, no relationship to Alan Shearer and yes, from the Pew Research Center. Now moving on, James, Baby boomers are not growing for some reason. It says here in a new study, another one hit play, Boomer Edison Research and NPR revealed that the podcast listing among those aged 55 plus that's me. Not quite you yet. I think you're younger than that.

James Cridland: 48:52

I

Sam Sethi: 48:52

So

James Cridland: 48:52

am.

Sam Sethi: 48:53

so-called boomers has not grown in recent years. Why are my compatriots not listening to more podcasts? James

James Cridland: 49:00

Well, yes, why indeed? So Larry Rosen, who is also a boomer, he ended up presenting this particular data and he suggests that one of the things is that actually, yes, they might think that they know what a podcast is, but actually they need a little bit more hand-holding in order to actually subscribe to one and listen to one. And and, you know, and all of that. But there's a tremendous amount of opportunity and the 55 plus age group. So, you know, some real, real fantastic opportunity in there. I guess it's the same problem that, you know, oldies radio stations have and that other media organizations have who aim at that particular marketplace is that it's quite difficult to sell advertising in there because all of the people who are buying your advertising, bright and Bushy, tell 25 year olds and they don't necessarily understand all of these old people's stuff. So there may be that, you know, side of it as well. But it's a great piece of research. Um, and I think there's some real opportunity there to focus on making podcasting easier and more interesting. And there are different reasons why older people are wanting to listen to podcasts, seemingly quite a lot of it is education for the 55 plus age group. So, you know, again, perhaps there are different formats that we could be having a look at here.

Sam Sethi: 50:35

Well, maybe there are. Now. Neil Cowling from Fresh Air might have the answer. He says they've released three new episodes of their neuroscience of blogs and podcasts in partnership with Kindle studios expert Robin Louder and Katherine Temple of Luce have been exploring the research into how our brains react and respond to longform audio. Basically, why are podcasts so special? The results are pretty fascinating. Absorbing stories and information says through audio releases different chemicals at different rates, using different levels of attention and ties into our daily conscious and unconscious rituals. The completely different way to video and short form content. So maybe there is a link between how long the podcast and what our neuroscience brain does. James

James Cridland: 51:20

Yeah, maybe there is. I know that commercial radio in the UK have done very similar research in terms of what the brain says. So great to see that from the Fresh Air folk and also a very clever move from talkSPORT, which they have just announced, announced basically a podcast network of football podcasts, or if you're American soccer podcasts, and it's basically there as a way to get advertisers, you know, complete scale of fan focused

Sam Sethi: 51:55

talked

James Cridland: 51:56

podcasts,

Sam Sethi: 51:57

about

James Cridland: 51:57

um, of, you know, being able to just make one bye and get into all of these football fans shows. So it's quite a clever move. I think podcast radio has been doing something like that for a while. I know that crowd network and voice work sports in the UK have been doing something a little bit similar. I think it's absolutely the right place if you're a sports radio station as talkSPORT is, it's absolutely the right thing to end up doing to put some kind of a network together. And it reminds me of Hubbard who have put their A broadcaster in the US and they've put a bunch of shows together from, I think it was Minnesota into one specific podcast app and perhaps representing some of those for ad sales as well. All of that I think makes a bunch of sense to actually make it easier for advertisers to to go out and buy those at scale.

Sam Sethi: 52:53

Hmm. I do think if you like talkSPORT, a football focused radio station, that maybe there's not something like being broadcast you want to listen to. So you then go to the website, jump on to another podcast, and they're still making advertising revenue from it. Smart, smart, smart.

James Cridland: 53:09

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 53:10

I mean, this is where the, you know, Spotify broadcasts. The podcast might come in as well. I think one of the things that when I was doing River Radio, we used Woosh KA, which is now Spotify broadcast a podcast

James Cridland: 53:24

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 53:24

and we had our live shows going direct to podcast. But we did have a similar idea of getting other local podcasters to submit podcasts to our platform so that we could create a network. And again, it would have allowed us to put advertising around local content from other podcasters. So

James Cridland: 53:41

yeah.

Sam Sethi: 53:41

I can see why talkSPORT is doing it again. The good news is, James, we might have Rob Lowenthal on the show next week. He's going through the Spotify PR Police right now to get clearance, but if he

James Cridland: 53:55

Mm.

Sam Sethi: 53:55

can get clearance, he said he'll come on.

James Cridland: 53:58

Yeah. Well that's it. Well that's a great thing. I know also that Triton have been very keen that we talked to Sharon Taylor from Omnis Studio because of course Sharon and Omni Studio have been doing podcast a broadcast for many years on their platform as well with, you know, quite significant success. So, you know, and they're very keen to point out that Spotify haven't invented this stuff, which is always, always important. So yes,

Sam Sethi: 54:28

Yes, we

James Cridland: 54:29

exactly,

Sam Sethi: 54:29

will reach out to them as well.

James Cridland: 54:30

exactly. It is surprising that Acast haven't done that, but Acast have done a ton of other things. They ended up doing something for a for a couple of mental health charities in the UK and Ireland last week selling a one time payment to basically get an exclusive podcast mix tape. But the money of that went to some mental health charities, which is a really good way of both helping a couple of worthy charities, but also pointing out that you have a one time payment platform which you can do this kind of stuff with. So a very clever plan from Acast as well. there. And of course, Lizzy Pollitt in the podcast Business Journal last week being interviewed, except it was your interview from a couple of weeks ago. So thank you for that. So.

Sam Sethi: 55:26

Well,

James Cridland: 55:26

Hmm

Sam Sethi: 55:26

that's right. You know, very welcome. Little known fact I found out yesterday from Rosalind, women in Acast are known as a sisters.

James Cridland: 55:35

assistance Nice nice.

Sam Sethi: 55:37

A sisters I that's why I was wondering whether the blokes were known as a bruise that or whatever.

James Cridland: 55:42

A bloke's

Sam Sethi: 55:43

I have no idea. I

James Cridland: 55:45

amen.

Sam Sethi: 55:45

have a blokes

James Cridland: 55:46

Amen.

Sam Sethi: 55:47

hair. Anyway, let's

James Cridland: 55:48

Yes

Sam Sethi: 55:48

move on. Let's move on before we get in trouble. James Jobs. Finally, the Podcast Academy board has announced who's available on the board for the next year. Why they haven't put it on their own website yet? I don't know, because all I did was find out from LinkedIn, from every one of those board members posting, I became a board member. So that's how I found out.

James Cridland: 56:13

Yes. Well, if you're a member, then you would have got a email and the email went out. It they send an email out every three weeks or so, every three or four weeks or so. And this was the first one after the board members had been, you know, had been voted in. They also needed to tell I understand the board members that didn't get voted in, they needed to end up telling those people that they hadn't been voted in. And so there was a little gap while they ended up doing that, too. But we still don't actually know who. The new treasurer is for example, we know that Rob Greenly is no longer a a board member, so we don't know who the new Treasurer is going to be and all of that. So and I gather that we'll find that out over the next couple of weeks. So it's seemingly quite a slow process, but I'm sure that there are good reasons for it.

Sam Sethi: 57:13

so we've got a couple of friends on there. James Aronson, Matty Stout, Jen, Sergeant

James Cridland: 57:19

do you like L.A. guys also on there and Jay Green and various other people? Yeah, there's a great big list of really good people who are on that particular list. So yeah, really good to see some good fresh names appearing there.

Sam Sethi: 57:38

you be glad to know? One of my friends is on there. I'm Amy Thacker and she's going to be on the show next week to tell us all about what it's like to be on the podcast Academy. The new board.

James Cridland: 57:50

Excellent. Well, that will be good to look forward to. In other news, somebody else has left Spotify, and it's a biggie. It's the other co-founder of anchor Nia Zuckerman, who until recently, well, she's currently VP and global head of audio books. And he will be that until September the 30th, which is his last day. But he's announced now. Gosh, how long is that? Is that leave

Sam Sethi: 58:19

I know

James Cridland: 58:20

notice that he has but he's announced

Sam Sethi: 58:23

that

James Cridland: 58:23

now that he will be working on quotes a new project in the startup space. Now I should point out that Michael McNarn no, his other co-founder of Anchor, is working as a V.C. in the startup space. My I wonder whether we're going to see a mic Nano. A mic nano Zukerman Um, partnership again, who knows? Um, but yeah, so he was, you know, thrilled about, you know, about moving on. Um, but uh, yeah, so it's, it's, that essentially means that all of the co-founders of Anchor have now gone and indeed Anchors Brand has now gone as

Sam Sethi: 59:09

I,

James Cridland: 59:09

well.

Sam Sethi: 59:09

I go back to the point I made many, many months ago. Why doesn't Spotify create a VC fund, get these really smart CEOs, all founder startups and give

James Cridland: 59:20

Yeah,

Sam Sethi: 59:20

them the money to build whatever they're going to build next under the Spotify umbrella, take an equity stake and let them get on rather than waiting for their golden handcuffs. Clearly the handcuffs come off on September the 30th and he gets his, you know, payout

James Cridland: 59:33

yeah,

Sam Sethi: 59:33

and then he's off. You know, why didn't they just do that?

James Cridland: 59:36

yeah, yeah indeed. And you could well say that for other companies as well. You know, it must be a very difficult thing for someone who has started up a business, who has worked really, really hard. Um, you know, and then all of a sudden has to, you know, get their expenses signed off by some, you know, accountancy work in some other part of the business because you've just been bought. But then I suppose, you know, there is always that there's a new high though Leroy Harris is Spotify's new UK and Ireland head of marketing which is nice to see. Christine Lewis has joined NH PR as their new vice president of development. Luminary though is cutting people, cutting shows and apparently has even reduced staff salaries, which is quite a thing I noticed on American Airlines that the only podcast you can get on American Airlines Seatbacks are from Luminary, which I thought was interesting. Paul Kim at Samsung appears to have left the company. He was the main contact for Samsung's free podcast service and he's worked for the company for nearly 20 years. We also that other staff will be affected as well. Samsung haven't actually made any public announcements about layoffs, but they did see their lowest profit figure for a decade earlier on in the month. So clearly they'll be wanting to turn things around as well. But there are more jobs if but there are more jobs. If you're looking for a job, then punk pod news has podcasting jobs around the industry and around the world and they're free to post as well. And you'll find those at pod news dot net slash jobs.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:22

I was looking for those jobs now, not that I need a job, by the way, before anyone asked, but that was a brilliant morning. And in this, you've got I have to say,

James Cridland: 1:01:29

It

Sam Sethi: 1:01:29

being an Aussie now yourself, James,

James Cridland: 1:01:32

in Woolloomooloo.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:32

what a Malu, what a place

James Cridland: 1:01:34

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:34

to work. I'd love to go there. It's a finger wharf, in case you're wondering, an old Chicago dock that attracts a trendy clientele with fine dining, hip bars and water views on all sides.

James Cridland: 1:01:46

Yes. It sounds really nice if you read that it doesn't it

Sam Sethi: 1:01:50

Yes,

James Cridland: 1:01:50

it's so it's right next

Sam Sethi: 1:01:52

that's

James Cridland: 1:01:52

to the city centre in Sydney so it's a little a little walk away from there. It's got a silly name because there's lots of O's and L's and everything else. I have to tell you it is.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:05

perfect for Scrabble.

James Cridland: 1:02:06

Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, I mean great, great for that sort of thing. I have to tell you, you know, it is a very gentrified area in part of it and not a very gentrified area in and other parts of it as well. And when you're walking through, you go, gosh, it's the sort of it's the sort of, you know, equivalent that you get when you're walking through parts of London that are really close to the city. But all of a sudden are not quite as up on their on their luck. So it's a strange

Sam Sethi: 1:02:38

Yes,

James Cridland: 1:02:39

part of the city centre there. But yeah, so Woolloomooloo, in case you're wondering, means either a place of plenty

Sam Sethi: 1:02:48

I

James Cridland: 1:02:50

or it means a young black kangaroo in the gadigal in the gadigal language. So there

Sam Sethi: 1:02:58

it.

James Cridland: 1:02:58

you

Sam Sethi: 1:02:58

Yeah.

James Cridland: 1:02:58

go. It's one of those two, perhaps.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:59

Okay. Now, Steven Bartlett, Diary of a CEO, is also looking for a very interesting high. He wants someone. It's a video graph and to follow him around for a brand new show, he says I'm hiring maybe the most interesting job I've ever hunted for. So he's got a new

James Cridland: 1:03:14

Yes,

Sam Sethi: 1:03:15

YouTube series he would. And

James Cridland: 1:03:17

they

Sam Sethi: 1:03:17

so,

James Cridland: 1:03:17

mention

Sam Sethi: 1:03:17

yeah, if

James Cridland: 1:03:18

it.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:18

you're looking to be the video man to follow Steven Butler around and that's your job.

James Cridland: 1:03:22

Yes. Good Lord. Oh, well, well, there you go.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:26

And lastly, I had a chat with Jess Kauffman from a she podcast

James Cridland: 1:03:31

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:31

just today. Actually, she's looking for some sponsors still. They are. They've got their next event. She podcasts live in June at the MGM National Harbor in Washington, DC and they trying desperately to find some new sponsors still are short of a couple. So if you are that person or that company and you would like to sponsor she podcasts live can you email Jess at she podcast dot com. We are trying to help them put together a she podcast London out the podcast show in May because both Ariel, Alison Blatt and Lauren Purcell are going to be over and there's a few other people like Naomi Mellor who will be there as well. And so, yeah, keep an eye out. They may a she podcast live in London coming up soon

James Cridland: 1:04:23

Yes, It's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod news newsletter. And here's where we do all of the tech talk. Buzz Sprout have launched Dynamic mid roles, so you've been able to have dynamic pre roles and dynamic post roles for this show and for many others, which is a nice and fancy thing. Now you can get dynamic mid roles as well. It basically works out where it's going to put the mid role for you automatically, but you can basically program something in that appears and maybe that's a sponsor credit or maybe that's something completely different. It's entirely up to you. You can find more details in the Buzz Sprout website, which will have more details there. What else have we got? Pocket casts have announced an episode search in the new beta version of the app. I haven't played around with it yet, but it is fascinating. Whenever I talk to people about pocket casts, they all go, Oh, it's a brilliant tapestry. It's really, really good. It's the only app that I use. And the amount of people who end up saying that must have quite some usage.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:32

yeah it looks like they they want to try and unveil or unpack how you can find say a certain speaker in one podcast and in another podcast episode rather than just searching for title. I think it's a really good idea. And yeah, so again we've got Ellie Rubinstein from pocket casts on next week, James to tell us all about it.

James Cridland: 1:05:52

Excellent. I'm very much looking forward to that. It's a great app and I'm looking forward to finding out what else they're working on. Cross out comments are coming soon. Well, we've been saying that for the last two years, haven't we? I think the first

Sam Sethi: 1:06:07

So.

James Cridland: 1:06:07

idea for a spec was ludicrously complicated. The second idea for a spec was paring it all down and basically going if it uses the Mastodon API, then great. Even that, it turns out, is a bit too complicated. It's what Daniel J. Lewis is currently doing is he is writing something which is super simple, super easy to end using. It uses a Jason file, which is, you know, a good thing. It can use the same JSON file as the chapters file if you want it to, but you don't necessarily have to do that. But anyway, very cool to see Daniel working very hard on that. So it'll be interesting to see what comes out of that over the next couple of weeks.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:54

Mm. Now Maurice over at Contracts has announced that you can now add custom value splits, basically donation settings for individual episodes. So if you use contracts, then great, you could start sharing your episode earnings with episode guests. It just got very easy, says Moritz.

James Cridland: 1:07:13

Yeah. And so I'm guessing that that talks with the podcast or wallet and is just another way into the podcast wallets which would make, which would make a bunch of sense. You're supporting the model tag aren't you, with your pod fans thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:28

Hmm. Get well, you came up with well, Kevin came up with the first idea. You then basically put it into pop news daily and this podcast as well. So I thought, why

James Cridland: 1:07:38

Hmm .

Sam Sethi: 1:07:39

don't we expose and see how it works? And it worked super quick. So yes, we have. And if you go on to our Twitter account, join Pod found, you'll see some images of it working there. So yes, we've got podcasts, we've got dudes and dads working, we've got mere mortals working and yours. And that's because they've only coded them. But once hosts start to support the pod role UI in the host, then it should be really, really simple for every podcaster to create a pod pro.

James Cridland: 1:08:09

Yeah. And if you missed this from last week, this is essentially a way for a podcaster to be able to recommend other shows and to be able to recommend, you know, other shows in their network or perhaps their other shows that they just want to recommend. Or perhaps it's a little bit of both. And so the idea is that it's much the same as a blog role was 15 years or so

Sam Sethi: 1:08:33

So

James Cridland: 1:08:33

ago, and this is much the same, but it's just called a pod role because it's there for podcasts. So I think it's a it's a good plan. And again, quite similar to Apple's rather closed channels system. And yeah, I think it's a good a good thing to keep an eye on.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:49

well. We also took what you put in to the GitHub James, because you put radical channel and really course well you didn't put you put radicals recommend we extend that to radicals episode. So now within pod plans and it's live you can actually now go to any episode of any show and add it to a playlist and then have that appear be content click on play to play that whole playlist, or you can share that or you can save it to your own playlist. So

James Cridland: 1:09:17

Hmm

Sam Sethi: 1:09:18

yeah, we've extended it to Cool Radicals episode and we'll see whether people pick up on it.

James Cridland: 1:09:22

Very fancy.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:24

Now one of the other clever people doing lots and lots of smart things around the podcasting index to do so is a guy, Stephen Bell. He is the founder and CEO of Kyrie Cast Up, but he also came up with Sovereign feeds. He's got a lovely little project called the Music Slide Project as something that he's going to tell us more about called Split Kit. So I thought I'd reach out to him because he's a he's a clever man and he's been working in this space for a little. But we also did, James, you'll be glad to know, discuss, cross up comments are nostre and you'll be able to find out what we both thought of those two standards in this interview. Steven is the CEO and founder of Cairo Castor, a wonderful podcasting and listening app, but he's also the inventor of sovereign fees, which many of you may not know. Steven, hello. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you, Sam? I'm great now. Sovereign fees. Let's start off with what or who is sovereign feeds. So sovereign Feeds is a RSS feed generator that probably covers about 80% of the new podcasting, 2.0 tags that have come out with that new podcast namespace. I named it Sovereign Feeds because it's primarily aimed at people who want to self-hosted their own feeds. So if you've got a WordPress site or you're using a whole Linux or Inode or something like that, you can use that to generate the files and then upload that to your own server. Okay. What made you write Sovereign Feeds? I mean, did you hear Adam talk about podcasting to to Oh, first what came first? Chicken and the sovereign feeds of podcasting, Twitter. Okay. So podcasting 2.0 came first and I was at work and my job allows me to listen to a lot of podcast, but there was no podcast player that did everything I wanted to do. So I started building my own and then I had a friend tell me about No Agenda. So I was listening to that and I heard Adam talking about this podcasting 2.0 thing. And when I saw that they had the value for value and that the developers could get paid as part of the development, I was like, Well, I'm going to start implementing that into this podcast player I'm building. So Karaoke master came first and then Adam was always talking about how he needed some sort of feed generator that he could use so that he can start implementing the podcasting 2.0 namespace of the new things that were coming out into his feeds because he wanted all that stuff in his feed so that he can start putting them there. And then the developers now had actual working RSS feeds to start testing these new tags. So which tags did you start off with? Person tag location. What were the first ones? Oh man, I'm pretty sure I did everything that was up through. Oh man, it was probably the fourth phase. And then when they did phase five, I implemented that stuff pretty quickly. Actually. No, they're doing phase five now. So some of the stuff, if it's experimental, I'll put it in just so we can kind of iron out some of the wrinkles. But yeah, I think, I think episode and season are those are probably the two that I don't have in. Okay Now career cast, which is your podcasting app. First of all, curious to know why you called it karaoke after. I'd called it that because I always thought podcasts were so I really like Curio Cabinets and just this collection of weird artifacts from around the world. And I thought, Man, that's what podcast are. They're just this collection of weird, like just everywhere. And then you can get stuff from Bigfoot to listening to guys talking about podcast music. It's just, it's a collection of a whole bunch of stuff from around the world. No, that makes it very logical. Now, with curio caster, is it an iOS app, a desktop app? Tell us more. So it is a web app, and that's mainly because I don't know how to program in anything but Java script. But the other thing that's nice about the web apps is with the browser is making it easy enough to do progressive web apps. You can on your phone download it to your desktop and it acts as if it was an App store app. I also like the progressive web apps because now you don't have to worry about the app stores accepting your app. You can't get any more open than just downloading the app off of the Internet Now. I mean, look, you know that I've got my own app coming out shortly called pop Fans and I've mirrored what you're doing in that progressive Web app style for very much exactly the same reasons. I didn't want to have three different development environments where I as an android and secondly, with the iOS 16.4 implementation support for Waze, you've got push notifications and homescreen iconography, etc. etc. So have you implemented any of the new iOS 16.4 features yet for Karaoke? Master yourself? I have not, although I have found that aside from the way that iOS played music, when your screen locked that Carol casters worked on the iOS, but the number one complaint was that as soon as the screen locked, your podcast stopped playing right. And has that been fixed, you think? I've got to be honest, I have not messed with karaoke master lately because I've been so focused on the other one. Music Side project, which is another app that I've been working on. Well, as you mentioned, let's talk about it. So what is the Music Side project? So Music Side Project comes from the idea that podcasters are having all the fun with being able to host their own content and you can have that go out to the whole world and any app can get on or can access your RSS feed and then all the app is just the skin for how that RSS feed is displayed to the listener. So Alex Gate had come up with an idea called a podcast Medium, where now your RSS feed has a tag inside of it that says, Hey, this is just dedicated to music and you could do it for video, you can do it for blogs or audio book. So now instead of having a podcast app, you could have an audio book app using the same RSS feed. But I'm excited about you doing it with the music. It reminds me of my younger days hanging out with the punk rock bands and everybody was booking their own shows and printing their own t shirts and I was like, Man, this is what RSS can be used to do to allow musicians to now or not have to use something like Spotify or get into iTunes and they can go straight to their listeners. And with the value for value tag that allows their listeners to support them directly instead of having to do the streaming, or here's the$0.99 for the song. So it really reminds me of the punk rock days. And I don't know, I'm excited about it. Okay, I'm curious why you started as a side project. You've mentioned the medium tag, and I fully agree the RSS feed allows the RSS to tell the app what type of content it's going to display or should display. And so you could say within Miracast to, for example, I get an RSS feed and it has the music tag set for Medium and therefore I changed the wording from episode to track and I change the show, cover art to album art as an example, right? Yes. And you could have done that and created a filter. So why did you not embed it within your existing app? Why did you take it as a separate app? So casual cats are does have a music tab and that was way back when people like Abel Kirby and Sir Spencer had made their own album. And then Dave Jones son has an album, so this has been around for about a year. So Curro Castro was like, Hey, like we can put this in. But for me, music is a different experience than podcasting. So I don't have a problem with going into one app that is dedicated to just one thing as opposed to this app that's an all in one app. So I also thought it would be nice for the bands to be able to just say, Hey, go to this particular website. And now as a user, you're not having to filter between podcast or music. This is very focused on what it is. Yeah, I can see the benefit of both actually a dedicated app and an all in one because as you said correctly, RSS This is an amazing flexible data format that allows us to transpose it into multiple digital content because again, video can be done through an audio books, as you mentioned as well, Radio, I think one that we're even talking about what's coming through RSS now as well. Yeah, obviously with the live tag you can do a live radio shows and man like RSS, is that all in one format that allows you to do just about any media distribution using this very common protocol? Yeah, what I love about it as well, I think we're having a massive agreement here. Stephen, by the way, is that you've got that data portability, you've got data ownership. So it gives the owner of the content all of that control which to close walled gardens like Spotify and Apple just don't give you. Yeah, and that's the exciting part is man, any kid with a microphone can now get worldwide distribution. And who knows? I mean, that may be the next hit that the radio people, because it doesn't match whatever algorithm they have would just bypass this person. And now this guy can still get his music out there and word of mouth could spread the sleeper that no one was aware of that now has an opportunity to to spread his music or his message with the podcast or it kind of like with what Amazon's doing where they allow people to self publish their books. And so I believe the book, The Martian was that sort of thing where he self-published the book and it was just word of mouth made it very popular. And now you can do that with just about any medium. So how many musicians now have you got on the Music Side project, do you think? So? I've had two musicians, so I've got Music Side Project, which is the player, and then I've got the Music Side Project Studio, which is a it's very similar to Sovereign feeds, but Sovereign Feeds was aimed at two podcasters. Studio has been stripped down where it doesn't have all of the tags that Sovereign Feeds does so that a musician can just get their music up there. And I've got two musicians who have tried it out and they'd hosted on their own WordPress, and I had one talk to me and he was excited about that because he said, Man, I can put this on my own server and I don't have to worry that if I'm in, say, Russia and the United States says, Hey, you're not allowed to pay these people in Russia, there's there's nothing that can be done about that. So he's excited that the stuff's on his own server. So with value for value, do you think there is going to be an eureka moment where people get it? I mean, you and I get it. There's the community of early adopters within the podcast community that get it. But do you think we can cross the chasm, as the book says, into the mainstream and get people to understand it? Yeah, If I didn't think that, I don't think I'd be spending my time on it. I think we are. Well, I post it on the podcast index, a social graph that showed internet users throughout each year from 1990 through present and in 1996 there were 39 million Internet users and in 1997 it was up to 50 million. Right now there are 45 million unique Bitcoin addresses. That means that as far as Internet usage goes, it's 1996. We're very early in the adoption of this, but once people get their first satoshis and it may be a thousand satoshis, which is$0.30 right now, there's something magical about that first boost you get that it all makes sense. Yeah, it does. And I've told this story many times. When I was at Netscape, we used to say the words HTP and W w and it's a URL and this is the web, not the internet. And no, there isn't a search engine. So you have to do it this way. And people looked at you and went, What are you talking about? And I think we have that same challenge, which is new vocabulary. It's a digital wallet. That's a name voice, that's a Satoshi. And people are going, I don't understand what you mean. And I think, yes, I do. I violently agree again with you, Stephen, that I think people will suddenly penny drop or Satoshi drop and then people look at it and they'll say, Yep, I understand it. And this is a better model of a peer to peer model of micropayments directly between listener and creator. Yeah. And there's something that's very satisfying about giving your money straight to the person who is creating the media that you're enjoying. It's not a Netflix subscription where you've got this consumer producer model and then we're all just consuming from this mass conglomerate. It's,Hey , this is a relationship between me and the band. And that's why when the podcasters read the boost to Graham's out, it's exciting to hear I sent this message in and it's being read out and it's a call out and it's fun. And the same thing goes on. But with the live tag and there may only be 30 people listening live, but there's just something fun that you can interact with the podcaster in real time. And yeah, I'm sending him a quarter with my message, but that quarter is totally worth the feeling I get back when he reads my thing out on the air. Exactly. It just reminds me of being a kid again when your mom would write into the local radio station and say, It's my birthday, and then it'll be by the radio and then read it out. And he'd be like, Oh man, that's so exciting. So yeah, I get the feeling. It's totally like that and it feels good to give money to this person who is giving you value and entertainment and I bet they're going to make a lot more doing it this way than they did through a subscription model or through buying a CD or through advertising. I think that we're at a point now that this technology is allowing us to build communities, and I think that's desperately what we want. We're so interconnected with how much the technology has connected us with the world, but I think we've lost that sense of community. And this technology is going to end up only enabling us to have these digital communities. Now you've come up with another app, Steve, not only when you get the time, but you've come up with another app called Split Kit. So tell me more about Split Kit. Okay, So Split Kit was the idea. So Adam Curry had made a comment that 40% of his female listeners listened directly on the Web page. They're not even using a Web app, which means that they're missing the opportunity to boost his show. So I was trying to figure out a way that he can have a link on a show, and then they click that and it takes them to a web page that allows them to boost the show with the boost to Graham. But then as I was building that, I was thinking it would be really cool for a band to have some sort of QR code that is behind them on a screen, and you could scan that while the band's playing and then you can hit that boost button in the app that comes up and now send a message to the band. And now have you seen the Instagram live where they got a bunch of messages that are scrolling or YouTube, a live chat. And part of the fun of the YouTube live chat is reading the chats of the people who are watching live. And I thought, Man, that'd be really cool. At a concert where people are like, This is my favorite song. I kissed my girlfriend for the first time to this song. Or the artist can do something where, Hey, everybody boosting what's your favorite song is? And that's going to be the next one we play in the set. So now the audience can interact with the band. And I just thought that the the split kit would be able to do something like that. And the idea behind the split kit is right now you can scan a QR code and send a payment, but it's only going to one address what the split kit does is it allows you to put in several addresses and because it's using Lightning's key send now you can send one payment and that payment will go to several addresses. And according to whatever the percentage you put in for that split, it automatically takes care of that. So now the drummer has his own wallet, the basis has his own wallet, the sound guy has a wallet, so you can set up the whole production team. Each has a wallet and then they're each getting a percentage of every single boost that comes in. And it's just coming off one. What looks like a QR code fundamentally, or is it's a QR code. So it's a QR code that just is a link to a website. And then that website is they had set up a promotional page and with that promotional page is tied, all their splits and the percentages and everything. And then it's just got a big pink boost button that when you click that you can decide, Hey, I want to send a 5000 satoshis and then that will go to each of the wallets on the back end using Applebee's API. Nice, nice. I like that. What else is coming down the track them for me. Well, those four projects keep me pretty busy. My next thing that I want to do is for Music Side Project. I want to start being able to share playlist and then you have your own album address because right now Music Side project using I'll Be for Everybody's Wallets. So now you can tie your album address to your playlist and if somebody likes what you've done, if they're like, Man, this guy's really great at curating a playlist. Now you can boost to that curator. So I've got that. And then the other thing I'm trying to do is figure out how I can make embeddable buttons for a split kit. So instead of it just being a QR code, it could be a button that you copy and paste into your website, and then somebody can click that and it will route them to your promotional page. Then that's a really cool idea because I remember in the very early days, a friend of mine built something like that. There was Twitter buttons and Facebook buttons that you can get within website and when you clicked on it and automatically bought it from JavaScript and fundamentally allows you to tweet from a web page back to your tweet account and similarly to your Facebook account. And that they work really well in the very early days. So I can see that working. And I love the idea of making it what is in effect, a much simpler click. Here's a QR code and it does the job for you rather than trying to understand how to do splits in the background, just heightening that complexity. Yeah, I think that's the next stage we're in. I think we've got enough people who are excited about it that now we've got to figure out how to simplify it so that the next group of people can be excited about it who aren't a bunch of tech nerds but still are excited to be able to support the people. And once we get that, then it's on to the next stage in who knows what it is after that. So if this is 96 or the dotcom boom is about to come where you just got a lot of money coming into and a lot of ideas and we'll see what sticks. So going back, Stephen, to what you were talking about playlists, did you see some of this stuff that can fit and recommended around pop roles? I have not. So the last thing I saw with pod roles was it is just a list of goods and then you can do a look up based on those goods. And I saw what it looked like on the Pod news website and it looks really slick. It's I think it's really cool, but I think that so there's another one called Remote item. And the idea is that you are connecting. So it looks like you would have the channel go to it and then the episode goods so that you could link to both of those and then just have, Hey, I just need the enclosure you URL for this particular episode. I mean we just need a list of separate episodes and enclosure URLs that we can play in order and just put that in the RSS space. So my recommendation is that you've got a radical channel for the pod role. Okay, You could have rel equals episode for the great list of playlists of trash talk. And so I'll pop. That's my own app. I've implemented it that way so that you can go down to any episode, click add to playlist, and then name that playlist and aggregate it as one and then share that out. So I think personally, that's a simpler way than the remote item tag, which I couldn't get my head around at all. Mm hmm. Yeah. So only thing I would like to see in either of those, because however we list it, as long as I can find and the episode and the audio file I need and then also find whatever images that go along with that, what's happening on the back end doesn't really matter. I can figure out. What I really want to make sure is that the curator is able to get his value block in there somehow. And right now there's a discussion on, okay, should the curator be included as a split or percentage or should the curator be there? And then the person who's listening can choose to, if he wants to provide value to the curator and I tend to lean towards we don't put him in the podcast or split. The podcaster should have a say on who his funds are going to. But if a listener wants to support the curator independently, I think there should be some sort of mechanism for them to do that. 100% agree because that curator is creating value for that podcaster by adding them to a playlist that people might then discover something of that podcast. So it might be multiple podcast is are being value added to by that curator of a playlist and they should therefore give that curator some sort of value back. Yeah, and I can see something also where inside the value block we create some sort of dynamic tag. So right now it's a static address inside the value block. But if we had a dynamic address that said, Hey, whoever the curator in this value block, this curated list is, go ahead and give them a 2% split or whatever the podcaster decides the split should be. I agree. I think you're right there. If we hardcoded into the value block, that might cause a problem. If that individual is not on the app concerned, there's little ways of doing it. But yes, I think bottom line, the person who creates that playlist should have some value creator given to them in some way as a split. Yeah, and that's what we're discussing right now. And we're pretty good at coming to something and something else. I really like about the podcasting 2.0 community is we're do ocracy. We're not making decisions based on committee. It's a if you build this, let your idea speak for itself and whoever builds the most compelling thing will end up being the one whose idea ultimately triumphs again. Only it's I mean the fountain with their booster Graham messages that ended up I know Adam Courier initially was just like, man, I'm not sure I like this. I don't want people being able to read my boost. And he's come around because the idea was compelling enough and Oscar was able to display, hey, this really does provide a lot of value for the listeners. Yeah. And also, I think strangely, a lot of trying to implement cross art comments. And I know Daniel's put forward a new Jason proposal to replace the existing proposal of cross app comments. But actually the best way that I found is because nearly everybody in the podcast community supports the lightning mechanism of key said, as you said, but also the old API. So you can really find the boost to grams across multiple apps in that way. And you can through the API, suck those boot scrums in related to the actual episode. So it's quite an easy mechanism as a developer to bring in booster grabs from other apps into your app to show a fundamentally cross that comment. Yeah. So I wish Activity pub was simpler to use. It just happens to be very complex and I don't know that anybody's figured out how to make it so that you can post a comment within the app displaying the comments is one thing, but if you can't post the comments then you don't really have a common system. And yeah, the key sin already is a mechanism that allows you to send a message to the podcaster. Now we just need a mechanism for the podcaster to share that message with any app that wants to access it. Can I let you in on a secret? Yeah, Stephen. I'm not going to be using activity, Pop. I understand that's the main reason I have not implemented cross app comments because I found Activity Pub to be. It's a less than ideal situation, especially with the not being able to easily post a comment. So I'm looking now at noster. Now I know again talking about him Adam was totally anti nasty. I didn't like the word zaps. I didn't think it was the way forward. And I think he's come around. I think only fundamentally, probably about a month, maybe a little longer ago I started getting my head into noster, albeit with the API. Now I don't know if you're aware now includes the not and pub within the API, so now you can pull that automatically. But two weeks ago you couldn't do that. You had to let the user cut and paste it into your app and now you can pull it through the API. And because of that you can use that in pub to post. You don't have to have the private key because the user can have that within their own app. So when they click share, they can put their private key element in. So you're not breaking any identity of that individual. And I think personally when you look at the fact that Napster's using, albeit using the Lightning Network address, it's using fundamentally what we in the podcasting will use, right. The same sort of mechanisms for payments. It seems that there's a great synergy between those two platforms. I just fundamentally think the activity pub itself is a 1012 year old technology who maybe has time. It's just been superseded or leapfrogged by Napster. Yeah, I do like the idea with Napster that you can use your one key to log into multiple different apps. And just like RSS, how I explain that RSS is the fundamental protocol going on behind the scenes. And every app you look at is just a scan to display what's in RSS. And Napster seems the same way. You've got this stuff going on behind the scenes and you could figure out what skin you prefer. So I really am excited about the idea of one key that is your identity. And I know that Napster is still very new. So there's some aspects of it that it feels slow and with all the relays and everything. But we've been doing a piece in and lightning and stuff and those guys are running with scissors as much as the podcasting 2.0 guys are. And I think there's going to be opportunities for us to figure out how the technology is going to work with each other. Exactly. Stephen, thank you so much for your time. It's been a great pleasure to meet you. Remind everyone where they can find Kyrie Acaster and all your other projects. All right, so you got Carole Kaster dot com. If you want a podcast player sovereign feeds dot com if you want to self-hosted your own podcast you've got music side project. If you want to listen to independent music artist and then you've got the split kit dot com if you want to develop your own promotional pages and allow people to send you boost or your audience, just easily scan a QR code and send you boost. And if they want to connect with you directly on your mastodon or Twitter. So I am Stephen B at Podcast Index dot Social. That's going to be the primary way to get a hold of me. You could also get a hold of me at Music Side Praj at two, and that's my Twitter account. So if I'm sure if you do a search for Music Side project, you could find me. But I try to limit my exposure. I get overwhelmed with how many different social media things you can be on. Yes, I think we all are. Stephen, thank you so much. And best of luck with all of those projects. Yeah, you too. Good luck on the part, fans, and appreciate the interview. Sam. No worries. Thanks, Stephen.

James Cridland: 1:39:17

Stephen Bell from Sovereign Fades and shall we jump straight into events and awards? Sam.

Sam Sethi: 1:39:23

Hmm. Go for it.

James Cridland: 1:39:26

Yes. Well, the the Podcast Awards, the People's Choice Podcast Awards are here podcast awards dot com is

Sam Sethi: 1:39:34

Okay.

James Cridland: 1:39:34

where to go to register for those the voting for the web is closed yesterday so

Sam Sethi: 1:39:42

So

James Cridland: 1:39:42

we should find out the winners of that relatively

Sam Sethi: 1:39:45

quickly.

James Cridland: 1:39:45

quickly. There are some more awards happening in London on the 26th of April which is the what's that next week? It's next week and.

Sam Sethi: 1:39:55

It is.

James Cridland: 1:39:56

Yes, you can. You can get there on the night if you like. You can also get there and watch virtually. Other events going on over the next couple of months include the New Zealand Podcast Summit

Sam Sethi: 1:40:07

So

James Cridland: 1:40:08

in Auckland in May or May the 13th, which I will be at. And then of course, as the podcast show 2023 in London between the 23rd and the 25th

Sam Sethi: 1:40:17

that

James Cridland: 1:40:17

of May. Sam and I will be there and radio days in North America in Toronto on June

Sam Sethi: 1:40:25

I

James Cridland: 1:40:25

the eighth and ninth, which I will be there for as well. And then, of course, those pod news live, which we're looking forward to. An awful lot more details at pod news, dot net slash live. There's events in Salford in Manchester on the 13th of June and events in London on the 27th of September, which you should consider coming to be great to end up seeing you there. And there are more events both paid for and free at pod news, virtual events or events in a place. And if you're organising something, tell the world about it's free to be listed. pod news dot net slash events now what's been happening for you this week, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:41:06

Well Andy Lehman from doesn't do and also the podcast answers with very calling to interview me about one. So we had a good old chat about what we're doing with that and I also spoke to Martin Linda Scott as well on the Tea Party media about pot fans as well. So beginning to get a little bit more of the word out about what we're doing. It's not for, as I said, we've just added pod rolls and playlists. We're finishing off the onboarding. So we're hoping that we'll get the final Alpha with everyone's feedback We've had so far out the door at the end of this month, the beta just before the London podcast show saying that we're working to

James Cridland: 1:41:46

Very nice.

Sam Sethi: 1:41:47

James. What's been up in PR? You've been in America at the NAB. A You're now in Berlin.

James Cridland: 1:41:52

Yes,

Sam Sethi: 1:41:53

What else has been happening?

James Cridland: 1:41:54

yes, yes. Yeah. And it turns out that the German train system seems to be in some form of industrial action, strife. This will be very and, you know, you'll be very unused to this being in the UK, train, train

Sam Sethi: 1:42:09

Oh,

James Cridland: 1:42:10

drivers

Sam Sethi: 1:42:10

perfectly

James Cridland: 1:42:10

going

Sam Sethi: 1:42:10

running

James Cridland: 1:42:10

going

Sam Sethi: 1:42:11

trains

James Cridland: 1:42:11

on strike.

Sam Sethi: 1:42:11

here. Yep,

James Cridland: 1:42:13

But yes, but it turns

Sam Sethi: 1:42:14

probably

James Cridland: 1:42:14

out that that's happening here as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:42:16

about.

James Cridland: 1:42:16

So quite how I'm going to get back to the airport on Friday. While I do now, I'll be using an Uber, except I won't be using an Uber because I don't think that they've got Uber here, but that but they've got something vaguely similar.

Sam Sethi: 1:42:27

Hang on, hang on, hang on. Wait, wait. Germany, the country with the umlaut over the U. Doesn't have Uber. That is

James Cridland: 1:42:34

Not

Sam Sethi: 1:42:34

just

James Cridland: 1:42:34

not so far as I'm aware. I mean, I mean, frankly, Uber doesn't have the umlaut over

Sam Sethi: 1:42:38

it

James Cridland: 1:42:38

the use, so you know,

Sam Sethi: 1:42:41

should

James Cridland: 1:42:41

what

Sam Sethi: 1:42:41

do.

James Cridland: 1:42:41

more can you say? But yes, there's all kinds of strikes and action going on here. I mean, I you know, I could be in Paris where everybody is trying to set themselves, you know,

Sam Sethi: 1:42:53

I

James Cridland: 1:42:53

on on

Sam Sethi: 1:42:54

liked

James Cridland: 1:42:55

on fire and everything else. Yes. It's a it's a weird and wonderful, weird and wonderful thing. But

Sam Sethi: 1:43:01

that

James Cridland: 1:43:01

yes. So who knows what's going to happen there? They do have over here, it turns out. So I'm not quite sure why I thought that they didn't have a although it does look hideously expensive. So perhaps that's one of the reasons. But anyway, yes, so I'm here. So I've basically got a day off on Friday.

Sam Sethi: 1:43:20

so

James Cridland: 1:43:20

So my idea was

Sam Sethi: 1:43:21

much

James Cridland: 1:43:21

to

Sam Sethi: 1:43:21

that

James Cridland: 1:43:22

travel around, see a little bit of Berlin. Um, and um, turns out that travelling around is going to be hard, so I'll just be walking around instead. But you know, why not?

Sam Sethi: 1:43:32

they've

James Cridland: 1:43:32

It'll

Sam Sethi: 1:43:32

got a lovely

James Cridland: 1:43:32

me

Sam Sethi: 1:43:32

zoo,

James Cridland: 1:43:32

fit.

Sam Sethi: 1:43:33

James. Lovely

James Cridland: 1:43:33

It does,

Sam Sethi: 1:43:34

zoo.

James Cridland: 1:43:34

Yes. Lovely zoo. Although that's a long walk away from me. Yes,

Sam Sethi: 1:43:38

How is it? Is the bloom anywhere

James Cridland: 1:43:39

it's

Sam Sethi: 1:43:40

near

James Cridland: 1:43:40

the what.

Sam Sethi: 1:43:40

you? The bloom? The indoor swimming area is fantastic. It's a really nice. What I like.

James Cridland: 1:43:45

Oh, great. Indoor swimming. Excellent.

Sam Sethi: 1:43:48

So

James Cridland: 1:43:48

Well,

Sam Sethi: 1:43:49

I'll try to give you some places to go. Jape,

James Cridland: 1:43:51

thanks

Sam Sethi: 1:43:51

like you can get under prison or the Olympic Stadium if

James Cridland: 1:43:53

to.

Sam Sethi: 1:43:53

you want, but you really want to do those.

James Cridland: 1:43:55

Yeah, I think, I think, I think finding a pub will be nice and finding

Sam Sethi: 1:43:58

Okay.

James Cridland: 1:43:58

some currywurst would be a plan.

Sam Sethi: 1:44:01

Oh,

James Cridland: 1:44:01

But

Sam Sethi: 1:44:01

yeah. Curry

James Cridland: 1:44:01

we will.

Sam Sethi: 1:44:02

Fest.

James Cridland: 1:44:02

We will see what happens. I have been invited to. There is some folk at Prodigy who are having a party this evening and they've invited me and I've basically said, I've just flown for 24 hours. I don't think I'm going to be necessarily in the mood for a party, but we will see. But I am going to specify this evening, so we'll see whether or not they've got a party going on, too. But anyway, that's it. Finally for this week.

Sam Sethi: 1:44:31

You can give us feedback using email to weekly output news dot net or send us a boost to. If you're a podcast that doesn't support boost, then grab a new app from Pod news dot net forward slash new podcast apps.

James Cridland: 1:44:43

Yes, Music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila D and we're hosted and sponsored by Bass Prout Podcast Hosting Made Easy.